Latest / Friedrich Nietzsche Philosophy Collection / Ecce Homo - Friedrich Nietzsche
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Translator's introduction. Eke Homo is the last prose work that
- 0:06Speaker 1: nietzschu wrote.
- 0:07Speaker 2: It is true that.
- 0:08Speaker 1: The pamphlet Nietsure contra Wagner was prepared a month later
- 0:13Speaker 1: than the autobiography, But we cannot consider this pamphlet as
- 0:17Speaker 1: anything more than a compilation, seeing that it consists entirely
- 0:22Speaker 1: of aphorisms drawn from such previous works as Joyful Wisdom,
- 0:28Speaker 1: beyond Good and Evil, the Genealogy of Morals, et cetera.
- 0:33Speaker 1: Coming at the end of a year in which he
- 0:36Speaker 1: had produced the Case of Wagner, The Twilight of the
- 0:40Speaker 1: Idols and the Antichrist, eke Homo is not only a
- 0:45Speaker 1: coping stone worthy of the wonderful creations of that year,
- 0:50Speaker 1: but also a fitting conclusion to his whole life, in
- 0:54Speaker 1: the form of a grand summing up of his character
- 0:58Speaker 1: as a man, his purpose as a reformer, and his
- 1:01Speaker 1: achievement as a thinker. As if half conscious of his
- 1:06Speaker 1: approaching spiritual end, Nietzsche here bids his friend's farewell, just
- 1:12Speaker 1: in the manner in which in the Twilight of the
- 1:15Speaker 1: Idols Aphorism thirty six, Part nine, he declares that everyone
- 1:21Speaker 1: should be able to take leave of his circle of
- 1:24Speaker 1: relatives and intimates when his time seems to have come,
- 1:29Speaker 1: that is to say, while he is still himself, while
- 1:35Speaker 1: he still knows what he is about, and is able
- 1:38Speaker 1: to measure his own life and life in general, and
- 1:43Speaker 1: speak of both in a manner which is not vouchsafed
- 1:47Speaker 1: to the groaning invalid, to the man lying on his back,
- 1:52Speaker 1: decrepid and exhausted, or to the more abundant victim of
- 1:57Speaker 1: some wasting disease. Nietzsch's spiritual death, like his whole life,
- 2:05Speaker 1: was in singular harmony with his doctrine. He died suddenly
- 2:10Speaker 1: and proudly soared in hand war which he, and he alone,
- 2:16Speaker 1: among all the philosophers of Christendom, had praised so wholeheartedly,
- 2:22Speaker 1: at last struck him down in the full vigor of
- 2:24Speaker 1: his manhood, and left him a victim on the battlefield,
- 2:28Speaker 1: the terrible battlefield of thought, on which there is no quarter,
- 2:34Speaker 1: and for which no Geneva convention has yet been established
- 2:39Speaker 1: or even thought of. To those who know Nietzsch's life work,
- 2:44Speaker 1: no apology will be needed for the form and content
- 2:48Speaker 1: of this wonderful work. They will know at least that
- 2:52Speaker 1: a man either is or is not aware of his
- 2:55Speaker 1: significance and of the significance of what he has accomplished,
- 3:00Speaker 1: and that if he is aware of it, then self realization,
- 3:05Speaker 1: even of the kind which we find in these pages,
- 3:08Speaker 1: is neither morbid nor suspicious, but necessary and inevitable. Such
- 3:15Speaker 1: chapter headings as why I am so wise, why I
- 3:19Speaker 1: am a fatality, why I write such excellent books, however
- 3:25Speaker 1: much they may have disturbed the equanimity and objectivity in
- 3:30Speaker 1: particular of certain nature biographers, can be regarded as pathological
- 3:36Speaker 1: only in a democratic age in which people have lost
- 3:40Speaker 1: all sense of gradation and rank, and in which the
- 3:44Speaker 1: virtues of modesty and humility had to be preached far
- 3:49Speaker 1: and wide as a corrective against the vulgar pretensions of
- 3:54Speaker 1: thousands of wretched nobodies. For little people can be enjoyed
- 4:00Speaker 1: only as modest citizens or humble Christians. If, however, they
- 4:06Speaker 1: demand a like modesty on the part of the truly great,
- 4:10Speaker 1: if they raise their voices against Nietzsche's lack of the
- 4:14Speaker 1: very virtue they so abundantly possess or pretend to possess,
- 4:20Speaker 1: it is time to remind them of Goeta's famous remark,
- 4:24Speaker 1: Nu di lupens sind bischeiden. Only nobodies are ever modest.
- 4:33Speaker 1: It took Nietzschre barely three weeks to write this story
- 4:36Speaker 1: of his life. Begun on the fifteenth of October eighteen
- 4:40Speaker 1: eighty eight, his four and fortieth birthday, it was finished
- 4:45Speaker 1: on the fourth of November of the same year, and,
- 4:49Speaker 1: but for a few trifling modifications and editions, is just
- 4:53Speaker 1: as Nietzsche left it. It was not published in Germany
- 4:57Speaker 1: until the year nineteen o eight, eight years after Nietzsa's death.
- 5:03Speaker 1: In a letter dated the twenty seventh of December eighteen
- 5:06Speaker 1: eighty eight, addressed to the musical composer Fuchs, the author
- 5:11Speaker 1: declares the object of the work to be to dispose
- 5:15Speaker 1: of all discussion, doubt, and inquiry concerning his own personality,
- 5:21Speaker 1: in order to leave the public mind free to consider
- 5:23Speaker 1: merely the things for the sake of which he existed.
- 5:28Speaker 1: Di dinger darend vingen ich darbin and true to his intention.
- 5:34Speaker 1: Nietzsche's honesty in these pages is certainly one of the
- 5:38Speaker 1: most remarkable features about them, From the first chapter, in
- 5:43Speaker 1: which he frankly acknowledges the decadent elements within him, to
- 5:47Speaker 1: the last page, whereon he characterizes his mission, his life task,
- 5:53Speaker 1: and his achievement by means of the one symbol Dionysus
- 5:58Speaker 1: versus Christ. Everything comes straight from the shoulder, without hesitation,
- 6:05Speaker 1: without fear of consequences, and above all, without concealment. Only
- 6:12Speaker 1: in one place does he appear to conceal something, and
- 6:15Speaker 1: then he actually leads one to understand that he is
- 6:19Speaker 1: doing so. It is in regard to Wagner, the greatest
- 6:23Speaker 1: friend of his life.
- 6:26Speaker 2: Who doubts.
- 6:27Speaker 1: He says that I old artillery man that I am,
- 6:31Speaker 1: would be able if I liked to point my heavy
- 6:35Speaker 1: guns at Wagner. But he adds everything decisive in this question,
- 6:41Speaker 1: I kept to myself, I have loved Wagner page one,
- 6:47Speaker 1: two two. To point, as many have done, to the
- 6:53Speaker 1: proximity of all Nietzure's autumn work of the year eighteen
- 6:57Speaker 1: eighty eight, to his breakdown at the beginning of eighteen
- 7:00Speaker 1: eighty nine, and to argue that in all its main
- 7:04Speaker 1: features it foretells the catastrophe that is imminent. Seems a
- 7:09Speaker 1: little too plausible, a little too obvious and simple to
- 7:13Speaker 1: require refutation that Nietzsche really was in a state which
- 7:19Speaker 1: in medicine is known as euphoria, that is to say,
- 7:23Speaker 1: that state of highest well being and capacity which often
- 7:27Speaker 1: precedes a complete breakdown. Cannot, I suppose, be questioned for
- 7:33Speaker 1: his style, his penetrating vision, and his vigor reached the
- 7:38Speaker 1: zenith in the works written in this autumn of eighteen
- 7:41Speaker 1: eighty eight. But the contention that the matter the substance
- 7:46Speaker 1: of these works reveals any signs whatsoever of waning mental health, or,
- 7:52Speaker 1: as a certain French biographer has it, of an inability
- 7:56Speaker 1: to hold himself and his judgments in check, is best
- 8:01Speaker 1: contradicted by the internal evidence itself. To take just a
- 8:07Speaker 1: few examples at random, examine the cold and calculating tone
- 8:12Speaker 1: of self analysis in chapter one of the present work.
- 8:17Speaker 1: Consider the reserve and the restraint with which the idea
- 8:21Speaker 1: in Aphorism seven of that chapter is worked out, not
- 8:25Speaker 1: to speak of the restraint and self mastery in the
- 8:28Speaker 1: idea itself, namely, to be one's enemies equal. This is
- 8:35Speaker 1: the first condition of an honorable duel. Where one despises,
- 8:41Speaker 1: one cannot wage war, where one commands, where one sees
- 8:46Speaker 1: something beneath one, one ought not to wage war. My
- 8:52Speaker 1: war tactics can be reduced to four principles. First, I
- 8:57Speaker 1: attack only things that I triumphant. If necessary, I wait
- 9:01Speaker 1: until they become triumphant. Secondly, I attack only those things
- 9:06Speaker 1: against which I find no allies, against which I stand alone,
- 9:12Speaker 1: against which I compromise nobody but myself. Thirdly, I never
- 9:18Speaker 1: make personal attacks. I use a personality merely as a
- 9:23Speaker 1: magnifying glass, by means of which I render a general,
- 9:27Speaker 1: but elusive and scarcely noticeable evil more apparent. Fourthly, I
- 9:34Speaker 1: attack only those things from which all personal differences are excluded,
- 9:40Speaker 1: in which any such thing as a background of disagreeable
- 9:44Speaker 1: experiences is lacking. And now notice the gentleness with which,
- 9:53Speaker 1: in chapter two Wagner, the supposed mortal enemy and the
- 9:58Speaker 1: supposed envid rival to Nietzschure, is treated. Are these the
- 10:03Speaker 1: words and the thoughts of a man who has lost
- 10:06Speaker 1: or who is losing control? And even if we confine
- 10:11Speaker 1: ourselves simply to the substance of this work and put
- 10:14Speaker 1: the question, is it a new niature or the old
- 10:18Speaker 1: nature that we find in these pages? Is it the
- 10:23Speaker 1: old countenance with which we are familiar? Or are the
- 10:27Speaker 1: features distorted, awry, disfigured? What will the answer be? Obviously
- 10:34Speaker 1: there is no new or even deformed Nietzsche here, because
- 10:38Speaker 1: he is still faithful to the position which he assumed
- 10:41Speaker 1: in thus spake Zarathustra five years previously, and is perfectly
- 10:47Speaker 1: conscious of this fidelity see page one four one. Neither
- 10:54Speaker 1: can he be even on the verge of any marked change,
- 10:58Speaker 1: because the whole of the third chapter, in which he
- 11:01Speaker 1: reviews his life work, is simply a reiteration and a
- 11:05Speaker 1: confirmation of his old points of view, which are here
- 11:10Speaker 1: made all the more telling by additional arguments suggested no
- 11:14Speaker 1: doubt by maturer thought. In fact, if anything at all
- 11:20Speaker 1: is new in this work, it is its cruel certainty,
- 11:24Speaker 1: its severe deliberateness, and its extraordinarily incisive vision, as shown
- 11:31Speaker 1: for instance in a summing up of the genuine import
- 11:35Speaker 1: of the third and fourth essays in the Thoughts out
- 11:39Speaker 1: of Season pages seventy five to seventy six, eighty eighty one,
- 11:45Speaker 1: and eighty two, a summing up which are most critical
- 11:50Speaker 1: analysis of the essays in question, can but verify Romanticism, Idealism,
- 11:57Speaker 1: Christianity are still scorned and despised. Another outlook, a nobler, braver,
- 12:05Speaker 1: and more earthly outlook, is still upheld and revered. The
- 12:10Speaker 1: great yay to life, including all that it contains that
- 12:14Speaker 1: is terrible and questionable, is still pronounced in the teeth
- 12:19Speaker 1: of pessimists, nihilists, anarchists, Christians and other decadence, and Germany,
- 12:28Speaker 1: Europe's flat land, is still subjected to the most relentless criticism.
- 12:34Speaker 1: If there are any signs of change besides those of
- 12:38Speaker 1: mere growth in this work, they certainly succeed in eluding
- 12:42Speaker 1: the most careful search undertaken with a full knowledge of
- 12:46Speaker 1: Nietzsche's former opinions, and it would be interesting to know
- 12:50Speaker 1: precisely where they are found by those writers whom the
- 12:54Speaker 1: titles of the chapters alone seem so radically to have perturbed.
- 13:01Speaker 1: But the most striking thing of all, the miracle, so
- 13:05Speaker 1: to speak, of this autobiography, is the absence from it
- 13:09Speaker 1: of that loathing, that suggestion of serfet with which a
- 13:14Speaker 1: life such as the one Nietzsche had led would have
- 13:18Speaker 1: filled any other man, even of power approximate to his own.
- 13:24Speaker 1: This anchorte, who, in the last years of his life
- 13:28Speaker 1: as a healthy human being, suffered the experience of seeing
- 13:32Speaker 1: even his oldest friends, including Goroda, show the most complete
- 13:37Speaker 1: indifference to his lot. This wrestler with fate, for whom
- 13:42Speaker 1: recognition in the persons of Bryannus, Taine and Strindberg have
- 13:49Speaker 1: come all too late, and whom even support sympathy and
- 13:54Speaker 1: help riving as it did at last through Deussen and
- 13:59Speaker 1: from Madame Darsalis, Marshal could no longer cheer or comfort.
- 14:05Speaker 1: This was the man who was able, notwithstanding to inscribe
- 14:09Speaker 1: the device amor fatty upon his shield on the very
- 14:14Speaker 1: eve of his final collapse, as a victim of the
- 14:17Speaker 1: unspeakable suffering he had endured. And this final collapse might
- 14:24Speaker 1: easily have been foreseen. Nietzsche's censorium, as his autobiography proves,
- 14:31Speaker 1: was probably the most delicate instrument ever possessed by human being.
- 14:36Speaker 1: And with this fragile structure the prequisite by the bye
- 14:40Speaker 1: of all genius, his terrible will compelled him to confront
- 14:44Speaker 1: the most profound and most recondite problems we happen to
- 14:50Speaker 1: know from another artist and profound thinker, Benjamin Disraeli, who
- 14:55Speaker 1: himself had experienced a dangerous breakdown. What the consequences pressed
- 15:00Speaker 1: icly are of indulging in excessive activity in the sphere
- 15:04Speaker 1: of the spirit, More particularly when that spirit is highly organized.
- 15:11Speaker 1: Disraeli says in Contrarini Fleming, Part four, Chapter five, I
- 15:18Speaker 1: have sometimes half believed, although the suspicion is mortifying, that
- 15:23Speaker 1: there is only one step between his state, who deeply
- 15:27Speaker 1: indulges in imaginative meditation and insanity. For I will remember
- 15:35Speaker 1: that at this period of my life, when I indulge
- 15:39Speaker 1: in meditation to a degree that would now be impossible,
- 15:43Speaker 1: and I hope unnecessary, my senses sometimes appear to be wandering.
- 15:51Speaker 1: And artists are the proper judges of artists, not Oxford dons,
- 15:57Speaker 1: like doctor Schiller, who, in his impertent attempt at dealing
- 16:02Speaker 1: with something for which his pragmatic hands are not sufficiently delicate,
- 16:08Speaker 1: eagerly avails himself of popular help in his article on
- 16:12Speaker 1: Nietzsche in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and
- 16:18Speaker 1: implies the hackneyed and wholly exploded belief that Nietzsche's philosophy
- 16:23Speaker 1: is madness in the making. As German philosophies, however, are
- 16:29Speaker 1: said to go to Oxford only when they die, we
- 16:32Speaker 1: may perhaps conclude from this want of appreciation in that quarter,
- 16:38Speaker 1: how very much alive Nietzsche's doctrine still is not that
- 16:45Speaker 1: Nietzsche went mad so soon, but that he went mad
- 16:49Speaker 1: so late is the wonder of wonders. Considering the extraordinary
- 16:54Speaker 1: amount of work he did, the great task of the
- 16:57Speaker 1: transvaluation of all values, which he actually accomplished, and the
- 17:02Speaker 1: fact that he enjoyed such long years of solitude, which
- 17:06Speaker 1: to him, the sensitive artist to whom friends were everything,
- 17:11Speaker 1: must have been a terrible hardship. We can only wonder
- 17:15Speaker 1: at his great health, and can well believe his sister's
- 17:18Speaker 1: account of the phenomenal longevity and bodily vigor of his ancestors.
- 17:25Speaker 1: No one, however, who is initiated, No one who reads
- 17:30Speaker 1: this work with understanding, will be in need of this
- 17:34Speaker 1: introductory note of mine, for to all who know these
- 17:39Speaker 1: pages must speak for themselves. We are no longer in
- 17:43Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. We have learned many things since then,
- 17:48Speaker 1: and if caution is only one of these things, at
- 17:51Speaker 1: least it will prevent us from judging a book such
- 17:54Speaker 1: as this one, with all its apparent pontifical pride and
- 17:59Speaker 1: surging self alliance, with undue haste, or with that arrogant
- 18:04Speaker 1: assurance with which the ignorance of the humble and the
- 18:09Speaker 1: modest has always confronted everything truly great. Anthony M. Ludovici
- 18:18Speaker 1: and of translator's introduction.
- 18:24Speaker 2: Preface one.
- 18:29Speaker 1: As it is my intention, within a very short time
- 18:32Speaker 1: to confront my fellow men with the very greatest demand
- 18:37Speaker 1: that has ever yet been made upon them. It seems
- 18:40Speaker 1: to me above all necessary to declare here who and
- 18:44Speaker 1: what I am. As a matter of fact, this ought
- 18:50Speaker 1: to be pretty well known already, for I have not
- 18:52Speaker 1: held my tongue about myself. But the disparity which obtains
- 18:58Speaker 1: between the greatness of my tier and the smallness of
- 19:01Speaker 1: my contemporaries is revealed by the fact that people have
- 19:06Speaker 1: neither heard me nor yet seen me. I live on
- 19:10Speaker 1: my own self made credit, and it is probably only
- 19:14Speaker 1: a prejudice to suppose that I am alive at all.
- 19:18Speaker 1: I do but require to speak to any one of
- 19:21Speaker 1: the scholars who come to the ober Enger Dean in
- 19:25Speaker 1: the summer in order to convince myself that I am
- 19:29Speaker 1: not alive under these circumstances. It is a duty and
- 19:35Speaker 1: one against which my customary reserve, and to still a
- 19:39Speaker 1: greater degree, the prider my instincts rebel to say, listen,
- 19:45Speaker 1: for I am such and such a person. For Heaven's sake,
- 19:49Speaker 1: do not confound me with anyone else.
- 19:53Speaker 2: Two.
- 19:55Speaker 1: I am, for instance, in no wise a bogey man
- 19:59Speaker 1: or more old monster. On the contrary, I am the
- 20:03Speaker 1: very opposite in nature to the kind of man that
- 20:07Speaker 1: has been honored hitherto as virtuous between ourselves. It seems
- 20:12Speaker 1: to me that this is precisely a matter on which
- 20:16Speaker 1: I may feel proud. I am a disciple of the
- 20:20Speaker 1: philosopher Dionysus, and I would prefer to be even a
- 20:24Speaker 1: satyer than a saint. But just read this book. May
- 20:30Speaker 1: be I have here succeeded in expressing this contrast in
- 20:34Speaker 1: a cheerful and at the same time sympathetic manner. Maybe
- 20:40Speaker 1: this is the only purpose of the present work. The
- 20:44Speaker 1: very last thing I should promise to accomplish would be
- 20:48Speaker 1: to improve mankind. I do not set up any new idols.
- 20:54Speaker 1: May old idols. Only learn what it costs to have
- 20:58Speaker 1: legs of clay to overthrow idols. Idols is the name
- 21:03Speaker 1: I give to all ideals. Is much more like my
- 21:07Speaker 1: business in proportion, as an ideal world has been falsely assumed,
- 21:14Speaker 1: reality has been robbed of its value, its meaning, and
- 21:18Speaker 1: its truthfulness. The true world and the apparent world in
- 21:23Speaker 1: plain English, the fictitious world and reality hitherto the lie
- 21:30Speaker 1: of the ideal has been the curse of reality. By
- 21:34Speaker 1: means of it, the very source of mankind's instincts has
- 21:38Speaker 1: become mendacious and false, so much so that those values
- 21:43Speaker 1: have come to be worshiped which are the exact opposite
- 21:46Speaker 1: of the ones which would ensure man's prosperity, his future,
- 21:51Speaker 1: and his great right to a future.
- 21:56Speaker 2: Three.
- 21:57Speaker 1: He who knows how to breathe in the air of
- 22:00Speaker 1: my writings is conscious that it is the air of
- 22:03Speaker 1: the heights that it is bracing. A man must be
- 22:08Speaker 1: built for it, otherwise the chances are it.
- 22:11Speaker 2: Will chill him. The ice is.
- 22:14Speaker 1: Near, the loneliness is terrible. But how serenely everything lies
- 22:22Speaker 1: in the sunlight, how freely one can breathe, how much
- 22:28Speaker 1: one feels lies beneath one. Philosophy, as I have understood it, hitherto,
- 22:36Speaker 1: is a voluntary retirement into regions of ice and mountain peaks,
- 22:41Speaker 1: the seeking out of everything strange and questionable in existence,
- 22:47Speaker 1: everything upon which hitherto morality has set its ban. Through
- 22:53Speaker 1: long experience derived from such wanderings in forbidden country, I
- 22:58Speaker 1: acquired an opinion very different from that which may seem
- 23:03Speaker 1: generally desirable. Of the causes which hitherto have led to
- 23:08Speaker 1: men's moralizing and idealizing, the secret history of philosophers, the
- 23:16Speaker 1: psychology of their great names, was revealed to me. How
- 23:21Speaker 1: much truth can a certain mind endure? How much truth
- 23:25Speaker 1: can it dare? These questions became for me ever more
- 23:30Speaker 1: and more the actual test of values. Error, the belief
- 23:37Speaker 1: in the ideal is not blindness.
- 23:41Speaker 2: Error is cowardice.
- 23:44Speaker 1: Every conquest, every step forward in knowledge is the outcome
- 23:48Speaker 1: of courage, of hardness towards one's self, of cleanliness towards
- 23:53Speaker 1: one's self. I do not refute ideals. All I do
- 23:59Speaker 1: is to draw on my gloves in their presence, nittimour inevetitum.
- 24:05Speaker 1: With this device, my philosophy will one day be victorious.
- 24:10Speaker 1: For that which has hitherto been most stringently forbidden is
- 24:14Speaker 1: without exception truth. Four In my life work, my Zarathustra
- 24:24Speaker 1: holds a place apart with it. I gave my fellow
- 24:29Speaker 1: men the greatest gift that has ever been bestowed upon them.
- 24:33Speaker 1: This book, the voice of which speaks out across the ages,
- 24:38Speaker 1: is not only the loftiest book on earth, literally the
- 24:41Speaker 1: book of mountain air. The whole phenomenon mankind lies at
- 24:47Speaker 1: an incalculable distance beneath it. But it is also the
- 24:52Speaker 1: deepest book, born of the inmost abundance of truth, an
- 24:57Speaker 1: inexhaustible well into which no picture can be lowered without
- 25:02Speaker 1: coming up again laden with gold and with goodness. Here
- 25:08Speaker 1: it is not a prophet who speaks one of those
- 25:11Speaker 1: gruesome hybrids of sickness and will to power, whom men
- 25:15Speaker 1: called founders of religion. If a man would not do
- 25:20Speaker 1: a sad wrong to his wisdom, he must above all
- 25:24Speaker 1: give proper heat to the tones, the halcionic tones that
- 25:29Speaker 1: fall from the lips of Zarathustra. The most silent words
- 25:35Speaker 1: are harbringers of the storm. Thoughts that come on dove's
- 25:40Speaker 1: feet lead the world. The figs fall from the trees.
- 25:45Speaker 1: They are good and sweet, and when they fall, their
- 25:48Speaker 1: redskins are rent a north wind, am I, and to
- 25:52Speaker 1: ripe figs. Thus, like figs, do these precepts drop down
- 25:56Speaker 1: to you? My friends, now drink their juice, their sweet pulp.
- 26:01Speaker 1: It is autumn all around, and clear sky and afternoon.
- 26:07Speaker 1: No fanatic speaks to you hear. This is not a sermon.
- 26:12Speaker 1: No faith is demanded in these pages. From out an
- 26:16Speaker 1: infinite treasure of light and well of joy. Drop by drop,
- 26:22Speaker 1: my words fall out. A slow and gentle gait is
- 26:26Speaker 1: the cadence of these discourses. Such things can reach only
- 26:31Speaker 1: the most elect It is a rare privilege to be
- 26:34Speaker 1: a listener here. Not everyone who likes can have ears
- 26:38Speaker 1: to hear. Zarathustra is not Zarathustra because of these things
- 26:44Speaker 1: a seducer. But what indeed does he himself say when
- 26:51Speaker 1: for the first time he goes back to his solitude,
- 26:54Speaker 1: just the reverse of that which any sage, saint, savior
- 26:59Speaker 1: of the world and other decadent would say, not only
- 27:04Speaker 1: his words, but he himself is other.
- 27:07Speaker 2: Than they.
- 27:10Speaker 1: Alone?
- 27:11Speaker 2: Do I know?
- 27:11Speaker 1: Go my disciples, get ye also hence and alone? Thus
- 27:17Speaker 1: would I have it? Verily? I beseech you take your
- 27:21Speaker 1: leave of me, and arm yourselves against Zarathustra, and better still,
- 27:27Speaker 1: be ashamed of him. Maybe he hath deceived you. The
- 27:32Speaker 1: Knight of Knowledge must be able not only to love
- 27:35Speaker 1: his enemies but also to hate his friends. The man
- 27:40Speaker 1: who remaineth a pupil or quiteth his teacher, but ill
- 27:44Speaker 1: and why would ye not pluck at my wreath? Ye
- 27:48Speaker 1: honor me, But what if your reverence should one day
- 27:52Speaker 1: break down? Take heed lest a statue crush you. Ye say,
- 27:58Speaker 1: ye believe in zarah Ethustra. But of what account is Zarathustra?
- 28:06Speaker 1: Ye are my believers, But of what account are all believers?
- 28:12Speaker 1: Ye had not sought yourselves when he found me. Thus
- 28:16Speaker 1: to all believers, therefore is all believing worth so little?
- 28:21Speaker 1: Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves. And
- 28:27Speaker 1: only when you have all denied me will I come
- 28:31Speaker 1: back unto you. Friedrich Nietzsche. On this perfect day, when
- 28:44Speaker 1: everything is ripening, and not only the grapes are getting brown,
- 28:48Speaker 1: a ray of sunshine has fallen on my life. I
- 28:52Speaker 1: looked behind me, I looked before me, And never have
- 28:57Speaker 1: I seen so many good things all at once. Not
- 29:01Speaker 1: in vain have I buried my four and fortieth year
- 29:04Speaker 1: to day I had the right to bury it. That
- 29:09Speaker 1: in it which still had life has been saved and
- 29:13Speaker 1: is immortal. The First Book of the Transvaluation of all Values,
- 29:19Speaker 1: the Songs of Zarathustra, the Twilight of the Idols, my
- 29:24Speaker 1: attempt to philosophize with the hammer All these things are
- 29:28Speaker 1: the gift of this year and even of his last quarter.
- 29:33Speaker 1: How could I help being thankful to the whole of
- 29:36Speaker 1: my life. That is why I am now going to
- 29:41Speaker 1: tell myself the story of my life. End of preface.
- 29:50Speaker 1: Why I am so wise one the happiness of my existence.
- 29:57Speaker 1: Its unique character perhaps consists in its faithfulness to speak
- 30:03Speaker 1: in a riddle. As my own father, I am already dead,
- 30:07Speaker 1: as my own mother, I still live and grow old.
- 30:12Speaker 1: This double origin taken as it were, from the highest
- 30:16Speaker 1: and lowest wrongs of a ladder of life, at once
- 30:20Speaker 1: a decadent and a beginning. This, if anything, explains that neutrality,
- 30:28Speaker 1: that freedom from partisanship in regard to the general problem
- 30:32Speaker 1: of existence, which perhaps distinguishes me to the first indications
- 30:39Speaker 1: of ascending or of descending life. My nostrils are more
- 30:44Speaker 1: sensitive than those of any man that has yet lived
- 30:49Speaker 1: in this domain. I am a master to my backbone.
- 30:52Speaker 1: I know both sides, for I am both sides. My
- 30:58Speaker 1: father died in his six and thirtieth year. He was delicate, lovable,
- 31:04Speaker 1: and morbid, like one who is preordained to pay simply
- 31:08Speaker 1: a flying visit. A greatest reminder of life rather than
- 31:13Speaker 1: life itself. In the same year that his life declined,
- 31:18Speaker 1: mine also declined. In my six and thirtieth year, I
- 31:23Speaker 1: reached the lowest point of my vitality. I still lived,
- 31:28Speaker 1: but my eyes could distinguish nothing that lay three paces
- 31:31Speaker 1: away from me. At that time it was the year
- 31:35Speaker 1: eighteen seventy nine. I resigned my professorship at Bale, lived
- 31:41Speaker 1: through the summer like a shadow in Saint Moritz, and
- 31:45Speaker 1: spent the following winter the most sunless of my life,
- 31:49Speaker 1: like a shadow in Naumburg. This was my lowest ebb.
- 31:55Speaker 1: During this period I wrote The Wanderer at his Shadow
- 32:00Speaker 1: without a doubt I was conversant with shadows. Then the
- 32:06Speaker 1: winter that followed my first winter Ingenoa brought forth that
- 32:11Speaker 1: sweetness and spirituality which is almost inseparable from extreme poverty
- 32:17Speaker 1: of blood and muscle, in the shape of the dawn
- 32:21Speaker 1: of day, the perfect lucidity and cheerfulness. The intellectual exuberance
- 32:27Speaker 1: even that this work reflects coincides in my case not
- 32:33Speaker 1: only with the most profound physiological weakness, but also with
- 32:37Speaker 1: an excess of suffering. In the midst of the agony
- 32:42Speaker 1: of a headache which lasted three days, accompanied by violent nausea.
- 32:48Speaker 1: I was possessed of most singular dialectical clearness, and in
- 32:52Speaker 1: absolutely cold blood. I then thought out things for which,
- 32:58Speaker 1: in my more healthy moments I am not enough of
- 33:01Speaker 1: a climber, not sufficiently subtle, not sufficiently cold. My readers
- 33:09Speaker 1: perhaps know to what extent I consider dialectic a symptom
- 33:14Speaker 1: of decadence, as for instance, in the most famous of
- 33:18Speaker 1: all cases, the case of Socrates. All the morbid disturbances
- 33:24Speaker 1: of the intellect, even the semi stupor which accompanies fever,
- 33:29Speaker 1: have and to this day remained completely unknown to me,
- 33:34Speaker 1: and from my first information concerning their nature and frequency,
- 33:40Speaker 1: I was obliged to have recourse to the learned works
- 33:44Speaker 1: which have been compiled on the subject. My circulation is slow.
- 33:51Speaker 1: No one has ever been able to detect fever in me.
- 33:55Speaker 1: A doctor who treated me for some time as a
- 33:58Speaker 1: nerve patient finally declared, no, there is nothing wrong with
- 34:02Speaker 1: your nerves. It is simply I who am nervous. It
- 34:08Speaker 1: has been absolutely impossible to ascertain any local degeneration in me,
- 34:14Speaker 1: nor any organic stomach trouble, however much I may have
- 34:19Speaker 1: suffered from profound weakness of the gastric system, as the
- 34:22Speaker 1: result of general exhaustion. Even my eye trouble, which sometimes
- 34:28Speaker 1: approached so perlously near to blindness, was only an effect
- 34:33Speaker 1: and not a cause. For whenever my general vital condition improved,
- 34:39Speaker 1: my power of vision also increased. Having admitted all this,
- 34:45Speaker 1: do I need to say that I am experienced in
- 34:48Speaker 1: questions of decadence. I know them inside and out. Even
- 34:54Speaker 1: that filigree art of apprehension and comprehension in general, that
- 34:59Speaker 1: feeling for delicate shades of difference, that psychology of seeing
- 35:04Speaker 1: through brick walls, and whatever else I may be able
- 35:09Speaker 1: to do, was first learned then, and is the specific
- 35:14Speaker 1: gift of that period during which everything in me was
- 35:18Speaker 1: subtalized observation itself, together with all the organs of observation,
- 35:29Speaker 1: to look upon healthier concepts and values from the standpoint
- 35:33Speaker 1: of the sick, and conversely, to look down upon the
- 35:37Speaker 1: secret work of the instincts of decadence from the standpoint
- 35:41Speaker 1: of him who is laden and self reliant with the
- 35:44Speaker 1: richness of life. This has been my longest exercise, my
- 35:50Speaker 1: principal experience, If in anything at all, it was in
- 35:56Speaker 1: this that I became a master today and knows the
- 36:00Speaker 1: trick I now have the knack or of reversing perspectives.
- 36:05Speaker 1: The first reason perhaps why a transvaluation of all values
- 36:10Speaker 1: has been possible to me alone. Two four. Apart from
- 36:19Speaker 1: the fact that I am a decadent, I am also
- 36:22Speaker 1: the reverse of such a creature, among other things. My
- 36:27Speaker 1: proof of this is that I always instinctively select the
- 36:30Speaker 1: proper remedy when my spiritual or bodily health is low,
- 36:37Speaker 1: whereas the decadent as such invariably chooses those remedies which
- 36:42Speaker 1: are bad for him. As a whole. I was sound,
- 36:46Speaker 1: but in certain details I was a decadent. That energy
- 36:52Speaker 1: with which I sentenced myself to absolute solitude and to
- 36:56Speaker 1: a severance from all those conditions in life to which
- 37:00Speaker 1: I had grown accustomed, my discipline of myself, and my
- 37:05Speaker 1: refusal to allow myself to be pampered, to be tended
- 37:09Speaker 1: hand and foot, and to be doctored. All this betrays
- 37:13Speaker 1: the absolute certainty of my instincts respecting what at the
- 37:18Speaker 1: time was most needful to me. I placed myself in
- 37:23Speaker 1: my own hands. I restored myself to health. The first
- 37:29Speaker 1: condition of success in such an undertaking, as every physiologist
- 37:34Speaker 1: will admit, is that at bottom, a man should be sound.
- 37:40Speaker 1: An intrinsically morbid nature cannot become healthy. On the other hand,
- 37:46Speaker 1: to an intrinsically sound nature, illness may even constitute a
- 37:51Speaker 1: powerful stimulus to life, to a surplus of life. It
- 37:57Speaker 1: is in this light that I now regard the long
- 38:01Speaker 1: period of illness that I endured. It seemed as if
- 38:05Speaker 1: I had discovered life afresh, my own self included. I
- 38:10Speaker 1: tasted all good things and even trifles, in a way
- 38:14Speaker 1: in which it was not easy for others to taste them.
- 38:19Speaker 1: Out of my will to health and to life, I
- 38:23Speaker 1: made my philosophy. For this should be thoroughly understood. It
- 38:28Speaker 1: was during those years in which my vitality reached its
- 38:32Speaker 1: lowest point that I ceased from being a pessimist. The
- 38:36Speaker 1: instinct of self recovery forbade my holding to a philosophy
- 38:41Speaker 1: of poverty and desperation. Now by what signs are nature's
- 38:46Speaker 1: lucky strokes recognized among men? They are recognized by the
- 38:51Speaker 1: fact that any such lucky stroke gladdens our senses. That
- 38:56Speaker 1: he is carved from one integral block, which hard, sweet
- 39:01Speaker 1: and fragrant. As well, he enjoys that only which is
- 39:06Speaker 1: good for him, His pleasure his desire ceases when the
- 39:10Speaker 1: limits of that which is good for him are overstepped.
- 39:15Speaker 1: He divines remedies for injuries. He knows how to turn
- 39:19Speaker 1: serious accidents to his own advantage. That which does not
- 39:23Speaker 1: kill him makes him stronger. He instinctively gathers his material
- 39:29Speaker 1: from all he sees, hears, and experiences. He is a
- 39:34Speaker 1: selective principle. He rejects much. He is always in his
- 39:39Speaker 1: own company, whether his intercourse be with books, with men,
- 39:43Speaker 1: or with natural scenery. He honors the things he chooses,
- 39:49Speaker 1: the things he acknowledges, the things he trusts. He reacts
- 39:55Speaker 1: slowly to all kinds of stimuli, with that tardiness which
- 39:59Speaker 1: long cause portion and deliberate pride have bred in him.
- 40:03Speaker 1: He tests the approaching stimulus. He would not dream of
- 40:07Speaker 1: meeting it half way. He believes neither in ill, luck
- 40:11Speaker 1: nor guilt. He can digest himself and others. He knows
- 40:16Speaker 1: how to forget. He is strong enough to make everything
- 40:21Speaker 1: turn to his own advantage. Lo then I am the
- 40:26Speaker 1: very reverse of a decadent, For he whom I have
- 40:30Speaker 1: just described is none other than myself. Three. This double
- 40:39Speaker 1: thread of experiences, this means of access to two worlds
- 40:44Speaker 1: that seem so far asunder finds in every detail its counterpart.
- 40:48Speaker 1: In my own nature, I am my own compliment. I
- 40:53Speaker 1: have a second sight as well as a first, and
- 40:58Speaker 1: perhaps I also have a third sight. By the very
- 41:02Speaker 1: nature of my origin, I was allowed an outlook beyond
- 41:06Speaker 1: all merely local, merely national, and limited horizons. It required
- 41:12Speaker 1: no effort on my part to be a good European.
- 41:16Speaker 1: On the other hand, I am perhaps more German than
- 41:20Speaker 1: modern Germans. Mere imperial Germans can hope to be. I
- 41:26Speaker 1: the last anti political German. Be this as it may.
- 41:31Speaker 1: My ancestors were Polish noblemen. It is owing to them
- 41:36Speaker 1: that I have so much race instinct in my blood.
- 41:40Speaker 1: Who knows, perhaps even the liberum veto translator's footnote, the
- 41:47Speaker 1: right to which every Polish deputy, whether a great or
- 41:50Speaker 1: inferior nobleman, possessed of forbidding the passing of any measure
- 41:55Speaker 1: by the diet was called in Poland the liberum veto
- 42:00Speaker 1: in Polish nai posvalum, and brought all legislation to a standstill.
- 42:06Speaker 1: And translator's note. When I think of the number of
- 42:11Speaker 1: times in my travels that I have been accosted as
- 42:14Speaker 1: a Pole, even by Poles themselves, And how seldom I
- 42:19Speaker 1: have been taken for a German. It seems to me
- 42:22Speaker 1: as if I belonged to those only who have a
- 42:26Speaker 1: sprinkling of German in them. But my mother, Francisca Ochler, is,
- 42:32Speaker 1: at any rate, something very German, as is also my
- 42:37Speaker 1: paternal grandmother Ermuth Krauss. The latter spent the whole of
- 42:43Speaker 1: her youth in good old Weimar, not without coming into
- 42:47Speaker 1: contact with Gerte's circle. Her brother Krauss, the professor of
- 42:53Speaker 1: theology in Koenigsberg, was called to the post of General
- 42:57Speaker 1: Superintendent at Weimar after Hrder's death. It is not unlikely
- 43:03Speaker 1: that her mother, my great grandmother, is mentioned in young
- 43:08Speaker 1: Gerta's diary under the name of Mirthken. She married twice,
- 43:14Speaker 1: and her second husband was Superintendent Nietzsche of Ellenburg. In
- 43:20Speaker 1: eighteen thirteen, the year of the Great War, when a
- 43:24Speaker 1: Napoleon with his general staff entered Ellenburg on the tenth
- 43:29Speaker 1: of October, she gave birth to a son, as a
- 43:33Speaker 1: daughter of Saxony. She was a great admirer of Napoleon,
- 43:38Speaker 1: and maybe I am so still. My father, born in
- 43:43Speaker 1: eighteen thirteen, died in eighteen forty nine. Previous to taking
- 43:49Speaker 1: over the pastorship of the parish of Rocken, not far
- 43:53Speaker 1: from Ludsenne, he lived for some years at the castle
- 43:57Speaker 1: of Altenburg, where he had charge of the education of
- 44:02Speaker 1: the four princesses. His pupils are the Queen of Hanover,
- 44:07Speaker 1: the Grand Duchess Constantine, the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg, and
- 44:12Speaker 1: the Princess Theresa of Saxe Altenburg. He was full of
- 44:17Speaker 1: royal respect for the Prussian King Friederic William, from whom
- 44:23Speaker 1: he obtained his living at Rocken. The events of eighteen
- 44:27Speaker 1: forty eight saddened him extremely. As I was born on
- 44:31Speaker 1: the fifteenth of October, the birthday of the king above mentioned,
- 44:36Speaker 1: I naturally received the Johenzoal names of Friederic William. There
- 44:43Speaker 1: was at all events one advantage in the choice of
- 44:46Speaker 1: this day. My birthday, throughout the whole of my childhood
- 44:50Speaker 1: was a day of public rejoicing. I regarded as a
- 44:54Speaker 1: great privilege to have had such a father. It even
- 44:58Speaker 1: seems to me that this in embraces all that I
- 45:01Speaker 1: can claim in the matter of privileges life, the great
- 45:06Speaker 1: yay to life.
- 45:07Speaker 2: Accept it.
- 45:09Speaker 1: What I owe to him above all is this that
- 45:13Speaker 1: I do not need any special intention, but merely a
- 45:17Speaker 1: little patience in order involuntarily to enter a world of
- 45:21Speaker 1: higher and more delicate things. There I am at home.
- 45:27Speaker 1: There alone does my inmost passion become free.
- 45:31Speaker 2: The fact that.
- 45:32Speaker 1: I have had to pay for this privilege almost with
- 45:35Speaker 1: my life certainly does not make it a bad bargain.
- 45:39Speaker 1: In order to understand even a little of my Zarathustra,
- 45:43Speaker 1: perhaps a man must be situated and constituted, very much
- 45:48Speaker 1: as I am myself, with one foot beyond the realm
- 45:52Speaker 1: of a living.
- 45:56Speaker 2: Four.
- 45:57Speaker 1: I have never understood the art of arousing ill feeling
- 46:01Speaker 1: against myself. This is also something for which I have
- 46:05Speaker 1: to thank my incomparable father, even when it seemed to
- 46:10Speaker 1: him highly desirable to do so. However unchristian it may seem,
- 46:16Speaker 1: I do not even bear any ill feeling towards myself.
- 46:20Speaker 1: Turn my life about as you may, you will find,
- 46:23Speaker 1: but seldom, perhaps indeed, only once, any trace of some
- 46:28Speaker 1: one's having shown me ill will you might perhaps discover. However,
- 46:35Speaker 1: too many traces of good will. My experiences, even with
- 46:40Speaker 1: those on whom every other man has burnt his fingers,
- 46:44Speaker 1: speak without exception in their favor. I tame every bear.
- 46:50Speaker 1: I can even make clowns behave decently. During the seven
- 46:54Speaker 1: years in which I taught Greek to the sixth form
- 46:57Speaker 1: of the college in Balah, I never had occasion to
- 47:01Speaker 1: administer a punishment. The laziest youths were diligent in my class.
- 47:08Speaker 1: The unexpected has always found me equal to it. I
- 47:12Speaker 1: must be unprepared in order to keep myself command whatever
- 47:18Speaker 1: the instrument was, even if it were as out of
- 47:22Speaker 1: tune as the instrument man can possibly be. It was
- 47:27Speaker 1: only when I was ill that I could not succeed
- 47:31Speaker 1: in making it express something that was worth hearing. And
- 47:36Speaker 1: how often have I not been told by the instruments
- 47:40Speaker 1: themselves that they have never heard their voices express such
- 47:45Speaker 1: beautiful things. This was said to me most delightfully, perhaps
- 47:51Speaker 1: by that young fellow, Heinrich von Stein, who died at
- 47:55Speaker 1: such an unpardonably early age, and who, after having considerately
- 48:01Speaker 1: asked leave to do so, once appeared in Silsmaria for
- 48:06Speaker 1: a three days sojourn, telling everybody there that it was
- 48:11Speaker 1: not for the Angerdine that he had come. This excellent person, who,
- 48:18Speaker 1: with all the impetuous simplicity of a young Prussian nobleman
- 48:22Speaker 1: had waded deep into the swamp of a Wagnerism and
- 48:28Speaker 1: into that of Deringism, into the bargain. Translator's footnote. Eugen
- 48:34Speaker 1: During is a philosopher and political economist whose general doctrine
- 48:39Speaker 1: might be characterized as a sort of abstract materialism with
- 48:43Speaker 1: an optimistic coloring. And translated his note seemed almost transformed
- 48:51Speaker 1: during these three days by a hurricane of freedom, like
- 48:55Speaker 1: one who has been suddenly raised to his full height
- 48:58Speaker 1: and given wings. Again and again, I said to him
- 49:03Speaker 1: that this was all owing to the splendid air. Everybody
- 49:07Speaker 1: felt the same. One could not stand six thousand feet
- 49:11Speaker 1: above by right for nothing. But he would not believe me.
- 49:17Speaker 1: Be this as it may. If I had been the
- 49:20Speaker 1: victim of many a small or even great offense, it
- 49:23Speaker 1: was not will, and least of all ill will that
- 49:27Speaker 1: actuated the offenders, but rather, as I have already suggested,
- 49:33Speaker 1: it was good will, the cause of no small amount
- 49:36Speaker 1: of mischief in my life, about which I had to complain.
- 49:41Speaker 1: My experience gave me a right to feel suspicious in
- 49:45Speaker 1: regard to all so called unselfish instincts, in regard to
- 49:50Speaker 1: the whole of neighborly love, which is ever ready and
- 49:54Speaker 1: waiting with deeds or with advice to me, means that
- 50:00Speaker 1: these instincts are a sign of weakness, that they are
- 50:03Speaker 1: an example of the inability to withstand a stimulus. It
- 50:08Speaker 1: is only among decadence that this pity is called a virtue.
- 50:15Speaker 1: What I reproach the pitiful with is that they are
- 50:19Speaker 1: too ready to forget shame, reverence, and the delicacy of feeling,
- 50:24Speaker 1: which knows how to keep at a distance. They do
- 50:27Speaker 1: not remember that this gushing pity stinks of the mob,
- 50:32Speaker 1: and that it is next of kin to bad manners,
- 50:36Speaker 1: that pitiful hands may be thrust, with results fatally destructive,
- 50:40Speaker 1: into a great destiny, into a lonely and wounded retirement,
- 50:45Speaker 1: and into the privileges with which great guilt endows one
- 50:52Speaker 1: the overcoming of pity. I reckon among the noble virtues.
- 50:56Speaker 1: In the Temptation of Zarathustra. I have a man a
- 51:00Speaker 1: case in which a great cry of distress reaches his ears,
- 51:05Speaker 1: in which pity swoops down upon him like a last sin,
- 51:09Speaker 1: and would make him break faith with himself. To remain
- 51:13Speaker 1: one's own master in such circumstances, to keep the sublimity
- 51:18Speaker 1: of one's mission, pure in such cases, pure from the many,
- 51:23Speaker 1: ignoble and more shortsighted impulses which come into play in
- 51:29Speaker 1: so called unselfish actions. This is the rub, the last test,
- 51:34Speaker 1: perhaps which Azarathustra has to undergo, the actual proof of
- 51:40Speaker 1: his power.
- 51:44Speaker 2: Five.
- 51:46Speaker 1: In yet another respect, I am no more than my
- 51:50Speaker 1: father over again, and as it were, the continuation of
- 51:54Speaker 1: his life after an all too early death, Like every
- 51:59Speaker 1: man who who has ever been able to meet his equal,
- 52:03Speaker 1: and to whom the concept retaliation is just as incomprehensible
- 52:08Speaker 1: as the notion of equal rights, I have forbidden myself
- 52:13Speaker 1: the use of any sort of measure of security or protection,
- 52:18Speaker 1: and also of course of defense and justification. In all
- 52:23Speaker 1: cases in which I have been made the victim either
- 52:26Speaker 1: of trifling or even very great foolishness. My form of
- 52:33Speaker 1: retaliation consists in this. As soon as possible, I set
- 52:37Speaker 1: a piece of cleverness at the heels of an act
- 52:40Speaker 1: of stupidity. By this means, perhaps it may still be
- 52:45Speaker 1: possible to overtake it. To speak in emparable, I despatch
- 52:50Speaker 1: a pot of jam in order to get read of
- 52:53Speaker 1: a bitter experience. Let anybody give me offense, I shall retaliate.
- 53:00Speaker 1: He can be quite sure of that. Before long I
- 53:04Speaker 1: discover an opportunity of expressing my thanks to the offender,
- 53:08Speaker 1: among other things, even for the offense, or of asking
- 53:12Speaker 1: him for something which can be more courteous even than giving.
- 53:18Speaker 1: It also seems to me that the rudest word, the
- 53:22Speaker 1: rudest letter, is more good natured, more straightforward than silence.
- 53:28Speaker 1: Those who keep silent are almost always lacking in subtlety
- 53:32Speaker 1: and refinement of heart. Silence is an objection to swallow.
- 53:38Speaker 1: A grievance must necessarily produce a bad temper. It even
- 53:43Speaker 1: upsets the stomach. All silent people are dyspeptic. You perceive
- 53:49Speaker 1: that I should not like to see rudeness under valued.
- 53:53Speaker 1: It is by far the most humane form of contradiction,
- 53:58Speaker 1: and in the midst of modern effeminacy, it is one
- 54:02Speaker 1: of our first virtues. If one is sufficiently.
- 54:05Speaker 2: Rich for it.
- 54:07Speaker 1: It may even be a joy to be wrong. If
- 54:11Speaker 1: a god were to descend to this earth, he would
- 54:14Speaker 1: have to do nothing but wrong. To take guilt, not punishment,
- 54:19Speaker 1: on one's shoulders, is the first proof of divinity.
- 54:28Speaker 2: Six.
- 54:30Speaker 1: Freedom from resentment and the understanding of the nature of resentment.
- 54:36Speaker 1: Who knows how very much? After all, I am indebted
- 54:40Speaker 1: to my long illness for these two things. The problem
- 54:45Speaker 1: is not exactly simple. A man must have experienced both
- 54:50Speaker 1: through his strength and through his weakness. If illness and
- 54:55Speaker 1: weakness are to be charged with anything at all, it
- 54:59Speaker 1: is with a fact that when they prevail, the very
- 55:02Speaker 1: instinct of recovery, which is the instinct of defense and
- 55:07Speaker 1: of war in man, becomes decayed. He knows not how
- 55:12Speaker 1: to get rid of anything, how to come to terms
- 55:16Speaker 1: with anything, and how to cast anything behind him. Everything
- 55:22Speaker 1: wounds him. People and things draw importunately near. All experiences
- 55:30Speaker 1: strike deep. Memory is a gathering wound. To be ill
- 55:35Speaker 1: is a sort of resentment in itself. Against this resentiment,
- 55:40Speaker 1: the invalid has only one great remedy. I call it
- 55:45Speaker 1: Russian fatalism, That fatalism, which is free from revolt, and
- 55:50Speaker 1: with which the Russian soldier to whom a campaign proves unbearable,
- 55:56Speaker 1: ultimately lays himself down in the snow to accept nothing more,
- 56:02Speaker 1: to undertake, nothing more, to absorb, nothing more, to cease
- 56:07Speaker 1: entirely from reacting. The tremendous sagacity of this fatalism, which
- 56:15Speaker 1: does not always imply merely the courage for death, but
- 56:19Speaker 1: which in the most dangerous cases may actually constitute a
- 56:23Speaker 1: self preservative measure. Amounts to a reduction of activity in
- 56:29Speaker 1: the vital functions, the slackening down of which is like
- 56:33Speaker 1: a sort of will to hibernate. A few steps further
- 56:38Speaker 1: in this direction we find the fakir, who will sleep
- 56:43Speaker 1: for weeks in a tomb, owing to the fact that
- 56:51Speaker 1: one would be used up too quickly if one reacted,
- 56:55Speaker 1: one no longer reacts at all. This is the principle,
- 57:00Speaker 1: and nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than
- 57:04Speaker 1: the passion of resentment, mortification, morbid susceptibility, the inability to
- 57:12Speaker 1: wreak revenge, the desire and thirst for revenge, the concoction
- 57:18Speaker 1: of every sort of poison. This is surely the most
- 57:23Speaker 1: injurious manner of reacting which could possibly be conceived by
- 57:28Speaker 1: exhausted men. It involves a rapid wasting away of nervous energy,
- 57:35Speaker 1: an abnormal increase of detrimental secretions, as for instance, that
- 57:41Speaker 1: of bile into the stomach. To the sick man, resentment
- 57:47Speaker 1: ought to be more strictly forbidden than anything else. It
- 57:52Speaker 1: is his special danger Unfortunately, however, it is also his
- 57:58Speaker 1: most natural prepare nsity. This was fully grasped by that
- 58:04Speaker 1: profound psychologist Buddha, his religion, which it would be better
- 58:11Speaker 1: to call a system of hygiene, in order to avoid
- 58:15Speaker 1: confounding it with a creed so wretched as Christianity depended
- 58:21Speaker 1: for its effect upon the triumph over a sentiment to
- 58:26Speaker 1: make the soul free, therefrom was considered the first step
- 58:30Speaker 1: towards recovery. Not through hostility. Is hostility put to flight
- 58:37Speaker 1: through friendship? Does hostility end? This stands at the beginning
- 58:42Speaker 1: of Buddha's teaching. This is not a precept of morality,
- 58:47Speaker 1: but of psychology. Resentment born of weakness is not more
- 58:53Speaker 1: deleterious to anybody than it is to the weak man himself. Conversely,
- 59:00Speaker 1: in the case of that man whose nature is fundamentally
- 59:03Speaker 1: a rich one, resentment is a superfluous feeling, a feeling
- 59:08Speaker 1: to remain master of which is almost a proof of riches.
- 59:13Speaker 1: Those of my readers who know the earnestness with which
- 59:17Speaker 1: my philosophy wages war against the feelings of revenge and rancor,
- 59:22Speaker 1: even to the extent of attacking the doctrine of free
- 59:25Speaker 1: will my conflict with Christianity is only a particular instance
- 59:30Speaker 1: of it. Will understand why I wish to focus attention
- 59:35Speaker 1: upon my own personal attitudes and the certainty of my
- 59:40Speaker 1: practical instincts, precisely in this matter. In my moments of decadence,
- 59:47Speaker 1: I forbeyed myself the indulgence of the above feelings because
- 59:52Speaker 1: they were harmful. As soon as my life recovered enough
- 59:55Speaker 1: riches and pride, however, I regarded them again as forbidden,
- 1:00:01Speaker 1: but this time because they were beneath me. That Russian
- 1:00:07Speaker 1: fatalism of which I have spoken manifested itself in me
- 1:00:12Speaker 1: in such a way that for years I held tenaciously
- 1:00:16Speaker 1: to almost insufferable conditions, places, habitations, and companions. One's chance
- 1:00:24Speaker 1: had placed them on my path. It was better than
- 1:00:28Speaker 1: changing them, than feeling that they could be changed, than
- 1:00:32Speaker 1: revolting against them. He who stirred me from this fatalism,
- 1:00:39Speaker 1: he who violently tried to shake me into consciousness, seemed
- 1:00:43Speaker 1: to me then a mortal enemy. In point of fact,
- 1:00:48Speaker 1: there was danger of death each time.
- 1:00:51Speaker 2: This was done.
- 1:00:52Speaker 1: To regard one's self as a destiny, not to wish
- 1:00:56Speaker 1: oneself different. This, in so circumstances is sagacity itself. Seven war,
- 1:01:09Speaker 1: on the other hand, is something different at heart, I
- 1:01:13Speaker 1: am a warrior. Attacking belongs to my instincts to be able,
- 1:01:20Speaker 1: to be.
- 1:01:20Speaker 2: An enemy, to be an enemy.
- 1:01:23Speaker 1: Maybe these things presuppose a strong nature. In any case,
- 1:01:28Speaker 1: all strong natures involve these things. Such natures need resistance. Consequently,
- 1:01:36Speaker 1: they go in search of obstacles. The pathos of aggression
- 1:01:40Speaker 1: belongs of necessity to strength as much as the feelings
- 1:01:45Speaker 1: of revenge and of rank or belongs to weakness. Woman,
- 1:01:50Speaker 1: for instance, is revengeful who weakness involves this passion, just
- 1:01:56Speaker 1: as it involves a susceptibility in the presence of other
- 1:02:00Speaker 1: people's suffering. The strength of the aggressor can be measured
- 1:02:05Speaker 1: by the opposition which he needs. Every increase of growth
- 1:02:10Speaker 1: betrays itself by seeking out of more formidable opponents or problems.
- 1:02:16Speaker 1: For a philosopher who is combative challenges even problems to
- 1:02:22Speaker 1: a duel. The task is not to overcome opponents in general,
- 1:02:28Speaker 1: but only those opponents against whom one has to summon
- 1:02:32Speaker 1: up all one's strength, one's skill, and one's swordsmanship. In fact,
- 1:02:38Speaker 1: opponents who are one's equals to be one's enemies equal.
- 1:02:46Speaker 1: This is the first condition of an honorable duel. When
- 1:02:51Speaker 1: one despises, one cannot wage war. Where one commands, where
- 1:02:58Speaker 1: one sees something beneath one, one ought not to wage war.
- 1:03:04Speaker 1: My war tactics can be reduced to four principles. First,
- 1:03:09Speaker 1: I attack only things that are triumphant. If necessary, I
- 1:03:14Speaker 1: wait until you become triumphant. Secondly, I attack only those
- 1:03:20Speaker 1: things against which I find no allies, against which I
- 1:03:25Speaker 1: stand alone, against which I compromise nobody but myself. I
- 1:03:32Speaker 1: have not yet taken one single step before the public
- 1:03:35Speaker 1: eye which did not compromise me. That is my criterion
- 1:03:41Speaker 1: of a proper mode of action. Thirdly, I never make
- 1:03:45Speaker 1: personal attacks. I use a personality merely as a magnifying glass,
- 1:03:52Speaker 1: by means of which I render a general, but elusive
- 1:03:56Speaker 1: and scarcely noticeable evil more apparent. In this way, I
- 1:04:02Speaker 1: attacked David Strauss, or rather the success given to a
- 1:04:07Speaker 1: senile book by the cultured classes of Germany. By this means,
- 1:04:12Speaker 1: I caught German culture red handed. In this way, I
- 1:04:17Speaker 1: attacked Wagner, or rather the falsity or mongrel instincts of
- 1:04:22Speaker 1: our culture, which confounds the super refined with the strong
- 1:04:28Speaker 1: and the feat with the great Fourthly, I attack only
- 1:04:34Speaker 1: those things from which all personal differences are excluded, in
- 1:04:40Speaker 1: which any such thing, as a background of disagreeable experiences
- 1:04:44Speaker 1: is lacking. On the contrary, attacking is to me a
- 1:04:49Speaker 1: proof of goodwill, and, in certain circumstances, of gratitude.
- 1:04:54Speaker 2: By means of.
- 1:04:55Speaker 1: It, I do honor to a thing. I distinguish a thing.
- 1:04:59Speaker 1: Whether I asociate my name with that of an institution
- 1:05:03Speaker 1: or a person, by being against or for either, is
- 1:05:08Speaker 1: all the same to me. If I waged war against Christianity,
- 1:05:14Speaker 1: I feel justified in doing so, because in that quarter
- 1:05:18Speaker 1: I have met with no fatal experiences and difficulties. The
- 1:05:23Speaker 1: most earnest Christians have always been kindly disposed to me. I, personally,
- 1:05:30Speaker 1: the most essential opponent of Christianity, AM far from holding
- 1:05:35Speaker 1: the individual responsible for what is the fatality of long ages.
- 1:05:44Speaker 2: Eight.
- 1:05:46Speaker 1: May I be allowed to hazard a suggestion concerning one
- 1:05:50Speaker 1: last trait in my character, which, in my intercourse with
- 1:05:54Speaker 1: other men, has led me into some difficulties with the
- 1:06:00Speaker 1: sense of cleanliness, the keenness of which is phenomenal, so
- 1:06:05Speaker 1: much so that I can ascertain physiologically, that is to say,
- 1:06:10Speaker 1: smell the proximity, nay, the innermost core, the entrails of
- 1:06:16Speaker 1: every human soul. This sensitiveness of mine is furnished with
- 1:06:22Speaker 1: psychological antennae, wherewith I feel and grasp every secret. The
- 1:06:28Speaker 1: quality of concealed filth lying at the base of many
- 1:06:32Speaker 1: a human character, which may be the inevitable outcome of
- 1:06:37Speaker 1: base blood, and which education may have veneered, is revealed
- 1:06:43Speaker 1: to me at the first glance. If my observation has
- 1:06:48Speaker 1: been correct. Such people whom my sense of cleanliness rejects
- 1:06:53Speaker 1: also become conscious on their part of the cautiousness to
- 1:06:57Speaker 1: which my loathing prompts me, and this does not make
- 1:07:01Speaker 1: them any more fragrant. In keeping with the custom which
- 1:07:06Speaker 1: I have long observed, pure habits and honesty towards myself
- 1:07:11Speaker 1: are among the first conditions of my existence. I would
- 1:07:16Speaker 1: die in unclean surroundings. I swim, bathe, and splash about,
- 1:07:22Speaker 1: as it were, incessantly in water, in any kind of
- 1:07:27Speaker 1: perfectly transparent and shining element. That is why my relations
- 1:07:33Speaker 1: with my fellows try my patience to no small extent.
- 1:07:39Speaker 1: My humanity does not consist in the fact that I
- 1:07:42Speaker 1: can understand the feelings of my fellows, but that I
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: can endure to understand my humanity is a perpetual process
- 1:07:53Speaker 1: of self mastery. But I need solitude, that is to say, recovery.
- 1:08:00Speaker 1: He turned to myself the breathing of free, crisp, bracing air.
- 1:08:06Speaker 1: The whole of my Zarathustra is a diathram in honor
- 1:08:10Speaker 1: of solitude, or if I have been understood in honor
- 1:08:15Speaker 1: of purity, thank Heaven. It is not in honor of
- 1:08:20Speaker 1: pure foolery. Translator's note, This, of course, is a reference
- 1:08:27Speaker 1: to Wagner's parserval. See my note on page ninety six
- 1:08:31Speaker 1: of The wil To Power, Volume one. In translator's note,
- 1:08:36Speaker 1: he who has an eye for color will call him
- 1:08:40Speaker 1: a diamond. The loathing of mankind, of the rabble was
- 1:08:45Speaker 1: always my greatest danger. Would you hearken to the words
- 1:08:49Speaker 1: spoken by Zarathustra concerning deliverance from loathing? What forsooth hath
- 1:08:57Speaker 1: come under me? How did I deliver myself from loathing?
- 1:09:03Speaker 1: Who hath made my eye younger? How did I soar
- 1:09:08Speaker 1: to the height where there are no more rabbles sitting
- 1:09:11Speaker 1: about the well? Did my very loathing forge me wings
- 1:09:16Speaker 1: and the strength to send fountains far off? Verily to
- 1:09:22Speaker 1: the loftiest heights. Did I need to fly to find
- 1:09:25Speaker 1: once more the spring of joyfulness?
- 1:09:30Speaker 2: Oh?
- 1:09:30Speaker 1: I have found it, my brethren, up here on the
- 1:09:35Speaker 1: loftiest height, The spring of joyfulness gusheth forth for me,
- 1:09:41Speaker 1: And there is a life at the well of which
- 1:09:44Speaker 1: no rabble can drink. With you. Almost too fiercely dost
- 1:09:49Speaker 1: thou rush for me, thou spring of joyfulness? And oft
- 1:09:54Speaker 1: times dost thou empty the pitcher again in trying to
- 1:09:58Speaker 1: fill it? And yet I must learn to draw near
- 1:10:02Speaker 1: thee more humbly, far too eagerly doth my heart jump
- 1:10:07Speaker 1: to meet thee my heart whereon my summer burneth my short, hot,
- 1:10:16Speaker 1: melancholy over blest summer. How my summer heart yearneth for
- 1:10:22Speaker 1: thy coolness. Farewell, the lingering afflictions of my spring past
- 1:10:28Speaker 1: is the wickedness of my snowflakes. In June summer, have
- 1:10:33Speaker 1: I become entirely and summer noontide a summer in the
- 1:10:39Speaker 1: loftiest heights, with cold springs and blessed stillness. O come,
- 1:10:45Speaker 1: my friends, that the stillness may wax even more blessed,
- 1:10:50Speaker 1: For this is our height and our home. Too high
- 1:10:54Speaker 1: and steep is our dwelling for all the unclean and
- 1:10:58Speaker 1: their appetites. Do but cast your pure eyes into the
- 1:11:03Speaker 1: well of my joyfulness, my friends, how could it thus
- 1:11:07Speaker 1: become muddy? It will laugh back at.
- 1:11:10Speaker 2: You with its purity.
- 1:11:13Speaker 1: On the tree called future do we build our nest
- 1:11:17Speaker 1: Eagles shall bring food in their beaks unto us lonely ones. Verily,
- 1:11:23Speaker 1: not the food whereof the unclean might partake, They would
- 1:11:28Speaker 1: think they ate fire, and would burn their mouths. Verily,
- 1:11:34Speaker 1: no abodes for the unclean do we hear hold in
- 1:11:37Speaker 1: readiness to their bodies our happiness would seem an ice cavern,
- 1:11:42Speaker 1: and to their spirits also, And like strong winds will
- 1:11:47Speaker 1: we love above them neighbors to the eagles, companions of
- 1:11:51Speaker 1: the snow, and playmates of the sun. Thus to strong
- 1:11:55Speaker 1: winds live, And like a wind, shall I one day
- 1:12:00Speaker 1: low amidst them and take away their soul's breadth with
- 1:12:04Speaker 1: my spirit? Thus my future willeth. Verily, a strong wind
- 1:12:10Speaker 1: is Zarathustra to all low lands, And this is his
- 1:12:15Speaker 1: counsel to his foes, and to all who spit and spew,
- 1:12:20Speaker 1: beware of spitting against the wind. End of Why I
- 1:12:31Speaker 1: am so wise why I am so clever one? Why
- 1:12:39Speaker 1: do I know more things than other people? Why in
- 1:12:43Speaker 1: fact am I so clever? I have never pondered over
- 1:12:48Speaker 1: questions that are not questions. I have never squandered my
- 1:12:53Speaker 1: strength of actual religious difficulties. For instance, I have no experience.
- 1:13:00Speaker 1: I have never known what it is to feel sinful.
- 1:13:05Speaker 1: In the same way, I completely lack any reliable criterion
- 1:13:09Speaker 1: for ascertaining what constitutes a brick of conscience. From all accounts,
- 1:13:16Speaker 1: a brick of conscience does not seem to be a
- 1:13:18Speaker 1: very estimable thing once it was done. I should hate
- 1:13:24Speaker 1: to leave an action of mine in the lurch. I
- 1:13:27Speaker 1: should prefer completely to omit the evil outcome, the consequences
- 1:13:33Speaker 1: from the problem concerning the value of an action. In
- 1:13:37Speaker 1: the face of evil consequences, one is too ready to
- 1:13:41Speaker 1: lose the proper standpoint from which one's deeds ought to
- 1:13:45Speaker 1: be considered. A brick of conscience strikes me as a
- 1:13:50Speaker 1: sort of evil eye. Something that has failed should be
- 1:13:55Speaker 1: honored all the more jealously, precisely because it has failed.
- 1:14:01Speaker 1: This is much more in keeping with my morality God,
- 1:14:06Speaker 1: the immorality of the soul salvation, a beyond to all
- 1:14:12Speaker 1: these notions, even as a child, I never paid any
- 1:14:16Speaker 1: attention whatsoever, nor did I waste any time upon them.
- 1:14:22Speaker 1: Maybe I was never naive enough for that. I am
- 1:14:28Speaker 1: quite unacquainted with atheism as a result, and still less
- 1:14:33Speaker 1: as an event in my life. In me, it is
- 1:14:36Speaker 1: inborn instinctive. I am too inquisitive, too incredulous, too high
- 1:14:44Speaker 1: spirited to be satisfied with such a palpably clumsy solution
- 1:14:48Speaker 1: of things. God is a too palpably clumsy solution of things,
- 1:14:55Speaker 1: a solution which shows a lack of delicacy towards us thinkers.
- 1:15:00Speaker 1: At bottom, he is really no more than a coarse
- 1:15:04Speaker 1: and root prohibition of us. Ye shall not think I
- 1:15:10Speaker 1: am much more interested in another question, a question upon
- 1:15:15Speaker 1: which the salvation of humanity depends to a far greater
- 1:15:19Speaker 1: degree than it does upon any piece of theological curiosity.
- 1:15:24Speaker 1: I refer to nutrition. For ordinary purposes. It may be
- 1:15:30Speaker 1: formulated as follows, how precisely must thou feed thyself in
- 1:15:38Speaker 1: order to attain to thy maximum power or virtue in
- 1:15:42Speaker 1: the Renaissance style, a virtue free from moralic acid. My
- 1:15:49Speaker 1: experiences in regard to this matter have been as bad
- 1:15:53Speaker 1: as they possibly could be. I am surprised that I
- 1:15:57Speaker 1: said myself this question so late in life, and that
- 1:16:02Speaker 1: it took me so long to draw rational conclusions from
- 1:16:06Speaker 1: my experiences. Only the absolute worthlessness of German culture its idealism,
- 1:16:14Speaker 1: can to some extent explain how it was that precisely
- 1:16:19Speaker 1: in this matter I was so backward that my ignorance
- 1:16:23Speaker 1: was almost saintly. This culture, which from first to last
- 1:16:30Speaker 1: teaches one to lose sight of actual things and to
- 1:16:34Speaker 1: hunt after thoroughly problematic and so called ideal aims, as
- 1:16:40Speaker 1: for instance, classical culture, as if it were not hopeless
- 1:16:45Speaker 1: from the start. To try to unite classical and German
- 1:16:50Speaker 1: in one concept it is even a little comical. Try
- 1:16:55Speaker 1: and imagine a classically cultured citizen of Leipzig. Indeed, I
- 1:17:02Speaker 1: can say, up to a very mature age, my food
- 1:17:06Speaker 1: was entirely bad expressed morally, it was impersonal, selfless, altruistic
- 1:17:14Speaker 1: to the glory of cooks and all other fellow Christians.
- 1:17:20Speaker 1: It was though the cooking in vogue at Leipzig, for instance,
- 1:17:25Speaker 1: together with my first study of Schopenhauer eighteen sixty five,
- 1:17:30Speaker 1: that I earnestly renounced my will to live to spoil
- 1:17:35Speaker 1: one's stomach by absorbing insufficient nourishment. This problem seemed to
- 1:17:41Speaker 1: my mind solved with admirable felicity by the above mentioned cookery.
- 1:17:47Speaker 1: It is said that in the year eighteen sixty six
- 1:17:51Speaker 1: changes were introduced into this department. But as to German
- 1:17:56Speaker 1: cookery in general, what has it not got on its conscience?
- 1:18:01Speaker 1: Soup before the meal still called a la tedesca in
- 1:18:07Speaker 1: the Venetian cookery books of the sixteenth century, meat boiled
- 1:18:13Speaker 1: to shreds, vegetables cooked with fat and flour, the degeneration
- 1:18:19Speaker 1: of pastries into paperweights, and if you add thereto the
- 1:18:26Speaker 1: absolutely bestial, postprandile drinking habits of the ancients are not
- 1:18:33Speaker 1: alone of the ancient Germans, you will understand where German
- 1:18:37Speaker 1: intellect took its origin. That is to say, in sadly
- 1:18:42Speaker 1: disordered intestines. German intellect is indigestion. It can assimilate nothing
- 1:18:52Speaker 1: but even English diet, which, in comparison with German and
- 1:18:57Speaker 1: indeed with French elementation, seems to me to constitute a
- 1:19:02Speaker 1: return to nature, that is to say, to cannibalism, is
- 1:19:07Speaker 1: profoundly opposed to my own instincts. It seems to me
- 1:19:13Speaker 1: to give the intellect heavy feet, in fact englishwoman's feet.
- 1:19:18Speaker 1: The best cooking is that of Piedmont. Alcoholic drinks do not.
- 1:19:23Speaker 2: Agree with me.
- 1:19:24Speaker 1: A single glass of wine or beer a day is
- 1:19:28Speaker 1: amply sufficient to turn life into a valley of tears.
- 1:19:31Speaker 1: For me, in Munich live my antipods. Although I admit
- 1:19:39Speaker 1: that this knowledge came to me somewhat late, it already
- 1:19:43Speaker 1: formed part of my experience even as a child. As
- 1:19:47Speaker 1: a boy, I believed that the drinking of wine and
- 1:19:50Speaker 1: the smoking of tobacco were, at first but the vanities
- 1:19:54Speaker 1: of youth, and later merely bad habits. Maybe the poor
- 1:19:59Speaker 1: wine of Naumburg was s partly responsible for this poor
- 1:20:03Speaker 1: opinion of wine in general. In order to believe that
- 1:20:07Speaker 1: wine was exhilarating, I should have to have been a Christian.
- 1:20:12Speaker 1: In other words, I should have had to believe in what,
- 1:20:16Speaker 1: to my mind is an absurdity, strange to say. Whereas
- 1:20:22Speaker 1: small quantities of alcohol, taking with plenty of water, succeeded
- 1:20:26Speaker 1: in making me feel out of sorts, large quantities turned
- 1:20:31Speaker 1: me almost into a rollicking tar. Even as a boy,
- 1:20:36Speaker 1: I showed my bravado in this respect to compose a
- 1:20:40Speaker 1: long Latin essay in one night, to revise and recopy it,
- 1:20:45Speaker 1: to a spy with my pen, to emulating the exactitude
- 1:20:49Speaker 1: and the terseness of my model Celust, and to pour
- 1:20:54Speaker 1: a few very strong grogs over it.
- 1:20:56Speaker 3: All.
- 1:20:57Speaker 1: This mode of procedure, while I was a pupil at
- 1:21:01Speaker 1: the venerable old School of Forta, was not in the
- 1:21:05Speaker 1: least out of keeping with my physiology, nor perhaps with
- 1:21:09Speaker 1: that of Sallust, however much it may have seemed alien
- 1:21:13Speaker 1: to dignified Beforta. Later on, towards the middle of my life,
- 1:21:20Speaker 1: I grew more and more opposed to alcoholic drinks. I
- 1:21:24Speaker 1: an opponent of vegetarianism, who have experienced what vegetarianism is,
- 1:21:32Speaker 1: just as Wagner, who converted me back to meet experienced it,
- 1:21:37Speaker 1: cannot with sufficient earnestness advise all more spiritual natures to
- 1:21:42Speaker 1: abstain absolutely from alcohol. Water answers the purpose. I have
- 1:21:50Speaker 1: a predilection in favour of those places where in all
- 1:21:53Speaker 1: directions one has opportunities of drinking from running brooks, n
- 1:22:00Speaker 1: turin sills, in vino veritas. It seems that here once
- 1:22:07Speaker 1: more I am at variance with the rest of the
- 1:22:10Speaker 1: world about the concept truth with me, spirit moves on
- 1:22:15Speaker 1: the face of the waters. Here are a few more
- 1:22:21Speaker 1: indications as to my morality. A heavy meal is digested
- 1:22:26Speaker 1: more easily than an inadequate one. The first principle of
- 1:22:31Speaker 1: a good digestion is that the stomach should become active
- 1:22:36Speaker 1: as a whole. A man ought therefore to know the
- 1:22:39Speaker 1: size of his stomach. For the same reasons, all those
- 1:22:44Speaker 1: interminable meals which I call interrupted sacrificial feasts, and which
- 1:22:50Speaker 1: are to be had at any tabla d'Hote, are strongly
- 1:22:55Speaker 1: to be depreciated. Nothing should be eaten between. Coffee should
- 1:23:01Speaker 1: be given up. Coffee makes one gloomy. Tea is beneficial
- 1:23:06Speaker 1: only in the morning. It should be taken in small quantities,
- 1:23:12Speaker 1: but very strong. It may be very harmful and indispose
- 1:23:16Speaker 1: you for the whole day if it is taken for
- 1:23:19Speaker 1: the least bit too weak. Everybody has his own standard
- 1:23:24Speaker 1: in this matter, often between the narrowest and most delicate limits.
- 1:23:31Speaker 1: In an inerviating climate, tea is not a good beverage
- 1:23:35Speaker 1: with which to start the day. An hour before taking it,
- 1:23:40Speaker 1: an excellent thing is to drink a cup of thick
- 1:23:43Speaker 1: cocoa freed from oil remain seated as little as possible.
- 1:23:49Speaker 1: Put no trust in any thought that is not borne
- 1:23:52Speaker 1: in the open to the accompaniment of free bodily motion,
- 1:23:58Speaker 1: nor in one in which even the muscles do not
- 1:24:01Speaker 1: celebrate a feast. All prejudices take their origin in the intestines.
- 1:24:07Speaker 1: A sedentary life, as I have already said, elsewhere, is
- 1:24:12Speaker 1: the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Two to the
- 1:24:19Speaker 1: question of nutrition, that of locality and climate is next
- 1:24:25Speaker 1: of kin. Nobody is so constituted as to be able
- 1:24:30Speaker 1: to live everywhere and anywhere, And he who has greatest
- 1:24:35Speaker 1: duties to perform, which lay claim to all his strength,
- 1:24:40Speaker 1: has in this respect a very limited choice. The influence
- 1:24:46Speaker 1: of climate upon the bodily functions, affecting their acceleration or retardation,
- 1:24:52Speaker 1: extends so far that a blunder in the choice of
- 1:24:56Speaker 1: locality and climate is able not only to alienate a
- 1:25:01Speaker 1: man from his actual duty, but also to withhold it
- 1:25:05Speaker 1: from him altogether, so that he never even comes face
- 1:25:09Speaker 1: to face with it. Animal vigor never acquires enough strength
- 1:25:14Speaker 1: in him in order to reach that pitch of artistic
- 1:25:18Speaker 1: freedom which makes his own soul whisper to him. I
- 1:25:23Speaker 1: alone can do that. Ever so slight, a tendency to
- 1:25:30Speaker 1: laziness in the intestines. Once it has become a habit
- 1:25:35Speaker 1: is quite sufficient to make something mediocre, something German, out
- 1:25:40Speaker 1: of a genius. The climate of Germany alone is enough
- 1:25:45Speaker 1: to discourage the strongest and most heroically disposed intestines. The
- 1:25:50Speaker 1: temper of the body's functions is closely bound up with
- 1:25:54Speaker 1: the agility or the clumsiness of the spirit's feet. Spirit
- 1:25:59Speaker 1: it sas is indeed, only a form of these organic functions.
- 1:26:06Speaker 1: Let anybody make a list of the places in which
- 1:26:09Speaker 1: men of great intellect have been found and are still found.
- 1:26:14Speaker 1: Where wit, subtlety, and malice constitued happiness, where genius is
- 1:26:21Speaker 1: almost necessarily at home. All of them rejoice in exceptionally
- 1:26:26Speaker 1: dry air. Paris, Provence, Florence, Jerusalem, Athens. These names prove something, namely,
- 1:26:38Speaker 1: that genius is conditioned by dry air, by a pure sky,
- 1:26:44Speaker 1: that is to say, by rapid organic functions, by the
- 1:26:48Speaker 1: constant and ever present possibility of procuring for oneself great
- 1:26:54Speaker 1: and even enormous quantities of strength. I have a certain
- 1:26:59Speaker 1: case in mind in which a man of remarkable intellect
- 1:27:02Speaker 1: and independent spirit became a narrow, craven specialist and a
- 1:27:07Speaker 1: grumpy old crank simply owing to a lack of subtlety
- 1:27:12Speaker 1: in his instincts for climate, and I myself might have
- 1:27:17Speaker 1: been an example of the same thing if illness had
- 1:27:21Speaker 1: not compelled me to reason and to reflect upon reason realistically.
- 1:27:27Speaker 1: Now that I have learned, through long practice to read
- 1:27:31Speaker 1: the effects of climate and meteorological influences from my own
- 1:27:36Speaker 1: body as though from a very delicate and reliable instrument,
- 1:27:41Speaker 1: and that I am able to calculate the change in
- 1:27:45Speaker 1: degrees of atmospheric moisture by means of physiological observations upon myself,
- 1:27:53Speaker 1: even on so short a journey as that from Turin
- 1:27:57Speaker 1: to Milan, I think with horror of the ghastly fact
- 1:28:02Speaker 1: that my whole life, until the last ten years, the
- 1:28:06Speaker 1: most perilous years, has always been spent in the wrong
- 1:28:11Speaker 1: and what to me ought to have been the most
- 1:28:13Speaker 1: forbidden places Naumburg, Forta, Turingia in general, Leipzig, bala, Venice,
- 1:28:24Speaker 1: so many ill starred places for a constitution like mine.
- 1:28:30Speaker 1: If I cannot recall one single happy reminiscence of my
- 1:28:33Speaker 1: childhood and youth, it is nonsense to suppose that so
- 1:28:38Speaker 1: called moral causes could account for this, as, for instance,
- 1:28:43Speaker 1: the incontestible fact that I lacked companions that could have
- 1:28:48Speaker 1: satisfied me. For this fact is the same today as
- 1:28:52Speaker 1: ever it was, and it does not prevent me from
- 1:28:56Speaker 1: being cheerful and brave. But it was ignorance in physiological
- 1:29:02Speaker 1: matters that confounded idealism that was the real curse on
- 1:29:07Speaker 1: my life. This was the superfluous and foolish element in
- 1:29:13Speaker 1: my existence, something from which nothing could spring, and for
- 1:29:19Speaker 1: which there can be no settlement and no compensation. As
- 1:29:25Speaker 1: the outcome of this idealism, I regard all the blunders,
- 1:29:30Speaker 1: the great aberrations of instinct, the modern specialization which drew
- 1:29:35Speaker 1: me aside from the task of my life, as for instance,
- 1:29:40Speaker 1: the fact that I became a philologist, why not at
- 1:29:43Speaker 1: least a medical man, or anything else which might have
- 1:29:47Speaker 1: opened my eyes. My days at Balah, the whole of
- 1:29:52Speaker 1: my intellectual routine, including my daily timetable, was an absolutely
- 1:29:58Speaker 1: senseless abuse of extraordinary powers, without the slightest compensation for
- 1:30:04Speaker 1: the strength that I spent, without even a thought of
- 1:30:08Speaker 1: what I was squandering and how its place might be filled.
- 1:30:13Speaker 1: I lacked all subtlety in egotism, all the fostering care
- 1:30:18Speaker 1: of an imperative instinct. I was in a state in
- 1:30:22Speaker 1: which one is ready to regard one's self as anybody's equal,
- 1:30:28Speaker 1: a state of disinterestedness, a forgetting of one's distance from others,
- 1:30:34Speaker 1: something in short, for which I can never forgive myself.
- 1:30:40Speaker 1: When I had well nigh reached the end of my tether,
- 1:30:44Speaker 1: simply because I had almost reached my end, I began
- 1:30:48Speaker 1: to reflect upon the fundamental absurdity of my life idealism.
- 1:30:54Speaker 1: It was illness that first brought me to reason.
- 1:31:01Speaker 2: Three.
- 1:31:03Speaker 1: After the choice of nutrition, the choice of climate and locality.
- 1:31:08Speaker 1: For the third matter concerning which one must not, on
- 1:31:12Speaker 1: any account make a blunder is the choice of the
- 1:31:15Speaker 1: manner in which one recuperates one's strength. Here, again, according
- 1:31:22Speaker 1: to the extent to which the spirit is sui generis,
- 1:31:27Speaker 1: the limits of which he can allow himself. In other words,
- 1:31:32Speaker 1: the limits of that which is beneficial to him become
- 1:31:35Speaker 1: more and more confined, as far as I in particular
- 1:31:40Speaker 1: am concerned. Reading in general belongs to my means of recuperation. Consequently,
- 1:31:48Speaker 1: it belongs to that which rids me of myself, to
- 1:31:51Speaker 1: that which enables me to wander in strange sciences and
- 1:31:55Speaker 1: strange souls to that in fact, about which I am
- 1:32:00Speaker 1: no longer in earnest. Indeed, it is while reading that
- 1:32:05Speaker 1: I recover from my earnestness. During the time that I
- 1:32:11Speaker 1: am deeply absorbed in my work, no books are found
- 1:32:14Speaker 1: within my reach. It would never occur to me to
- 1:32:18Speaker 1: allow anyone to speak or even think in my presence,
- 1:32:22Speaker 1: for that is what reading would mean. Has anyone ever
- 1:32:28Speaker 1: actually noticed that during the period of profound tension to
- 1:32:32Speaker 1: which the state of pregnancy condemns not only the mind,
- 1:32:36Speaker 1: but also, at bottom the whole organism, accident and every
- 1:32:41Speaker 1: kind of external stimulus acts too acutely and strikes too
- 1:32:46Speaker 1: deep accident an external stimuli must as far as possible,
- 1:32:51Speaker 1: be avoided. A sort of walling of one's self in
- 1:32:56Speaker 1: is one of the primary instinctive precautions of spiritual pregnancy.
- 1:33:02Speaker 1: Shall I allow a strange thought to steal secretly over
- 1:33:05Speaker 1: the wall, For that is what reading would mean. The
- 1:33:11Speaker 1: periods of work and fruitfulness are followed by periods of recuperation.
- 1:33:17Speaker 1: Come hither, ye, delightful, intellectual, intelligent books. Shall I read
- 1:33:23Speaker 1: German books? I must go back six months to catch
- 1:33:27Speaker 1: myself with a book in my hand. What was it?
- 1:33:32Speaker 1: An excellent study by Victor Brouschardt upon the Greek skeptics,
- 1:33:37Speaker 1: in which my Latertiana was used to advantage translate his footnote. Nietzsche,
- 1:33:44Speaker 1: as is well known, devoted much time, when a student
- 1:33:47Speaker 1: at Leipzig, to the study of three Greek philosophers, Theogenius, Diogenes,
- 1:33:54Speaker 1: Laertius and Democritus. This study first bore fruit in the
- 1:34:00Speaker 1: case of a paper Zur Geschichte der tijordignee shin Spruchsanlog,
- 1:34:09Speaker 1: which was subsequently published by the most influential journal of
- 1:34:13Speaker 1: classical philology in Germany. Later, however, it enabled Nietzsche to
- 1:34:18Speaker 1: enter for the prize offered by the University of Leipzig
- 1:34:22Speaker 1: for an essay De Fonti bus dionigi Sleerti. He was
- 1:34:29Speaker 1: successful in gaining the prize, and the treaties was afterwards
- 1:34:33Speaker 1: published in the Ranches Museum and is still quoted as
- 1:34:38Speaker 1: an authority. It is to this essay, written when he
- 1:34:43Speaker 1: was twenty three years of age, that he here refers
- 1:34:47Speaker 1: and translator's note, the skeptics the only honorable types among
- 1:34:54Speaker 1: that double faced and sometimes sequintable faced throng. The philosophers. Otherwise,
- 1:35:02Speaker 1: I almost always take refuge in the same books. Altogether.
- 1:35:07Speaker 1: The number is small. They are books which are precisely
- 1:35:11Speaker 1: my proper fare. It is not perhaps in my nature
- 1:35:16Speaker 1: to read much and of all sorts a library makes
- 1:35:20Speaker 1: me ill. Neither is it my nature to love much
- 1:35:24Speaker 1: or many kinds of things. Suspicion or even hostility towards
- 1:35:29Speaker 1: new books is much more akin to my instinctive feeling
- 1:35:33Speaker 1: than toleration, lagers, decueerres, and other forms of neighbor love.
- 1:35:42Speaker 1: It is to a small number of old French authors
- 1:35:45Speaker 1: that I always return again and again. I believe only
- 1:35:49Speaker 1: in French culture, and regard everything else in Europe which
- 1:35:52Speaker 1: calls itself culture as a misunderstanding. I do not even
- 1:35:57Speaker 1: take the German kind into consideration. The few instances of
- 1:36:01Speaker 1: high culture with which I have met in Germany were
- 1:36:05Speaker 1: all French in their origin. The most striking example of
- 1:36:09Speaker 1: this was Madame Cosima Wagner, by far the most decisive
- 1:36:14Speaker 1: voice in matters of taste that I have ever heard.
- 1:36:17Speaker 1: If I do not read, but literally love Pascal as
- 1:36:21Speaker 1: the most instinctive sacrifice to Christianity, killing himself inch by inch,
- 1:36:27Speaker 1: first bodily then spiritually according to the terrible consistency of
- 1:36:32Speaker 1: this most appalling form of inhuman cruelty. If I have
- 1:36:37Speaker 1: something of Montaigne's mischievousness in my soul, and who knows,
- 1:36:43Speaker 1: perhaps also in my body, if my artist's tastes endeavor
- 1:36:48Speaker 1: to defend the name of Molieri, Coronelli and Rancine, and
- 1:36:53Speaker 1: not without bitterness against such a wild genius as Shakespeare,
- 1:36:59Speaker 1: all this does not prevent me from regarding even the
- 1:37:02Speaker 1: latter day Frenchmen also as charming companions. I can think
- 1:37:06Speaker 1: of absolutely no century in history in which a net
- 1:37:11Speaker 1: full of more inquisitive and at the same time more
- 1:37:14Speaker 1: subtle psychologists could be drawn up together than in Paris
- 1:37:19Speaker 1: of the present day. Let me mention a few at random,
- 1:37:24Speaker 1: for the number is by no means small. Paul Borges,
- 1:37:29Speaker 1: Pierre l'otti, hip Mail, hack Anatole, France, Jewel la match,
- 1:37:38Speaker 1: or to point to one of strong race, a genuine Latin,
- 1:37:42Speaker 1: of whom I am particularly fond guide de mant passant
- 1:37:48Speaker 1: between ourselves. I preferred this generation even to its masters,
- 1:37:53Speaker 1: all of whom were corrupted by German philosophy, obtained for
- 1:37:58Speaker 1: instance by Hegel, who he has to thank for his
- 1:38:01Speaker 1: misunderstanding of great men and great periods. Wherever Germany extends
- 1:38:08Speaker 1: her sway, she ruins culture.
- 1:38:12Speaker 2: It was the war.
- 1:38:13Speaker 1: Which first saved the spirit of France. Stendhaul is one
- 1:38:18Speaker 1: of the happiest accidents of my life. For everything that
- 1:38:22Speaker 1: marks an epoch in it has been brought to me
- 1:38:25Speaker 1: by accident, and never by means of a recommendation. He
- 1:38:30Speaker 1: is quite priceless with his psychologist's eye, quick at forestalling
- 1:38:36Speaker 1: and anticipating, with his grasp of facts, which is reminiscent
- 1:38:41Speaker 1: of the same art in the greatest of all masters
- 1:38:44Speaker 1: of fact Exon GUIs Napolimne. And last but not least,
- 1:38:51Speaker 1: as an honest atheist, a specimen which is both rare
- 1:38:55Speaker 1: and difficult to discover in France. All honor to spare
- 1:39:00Speaker 1: marry me. Maybe I am even envious of Standal. He
- 1:39:07Speaker 1: robbed me of the best atheistic joke which I, of
- 1:39:11Speaker 1: all people, could have perpetrated. God's only excuse is that
- 1:39:16Speaker 1: he does not exist. I myself have said somewhere, what
- 1:39:23Speaker 1: has been the greatest rejection to life?
- 1:39:25Speaker 2: Hitherto God? Four?
- 1:39:32Speaker 1: It was Heinrich Heine who gave me the most perfect
- 1:39:35Speaker 1: idea of what a lyrical poet could be.
- 1:39:40Speaker 2: In vain do.
- 1:39:40Speaker 1: I searched through all the kingdoms of antiquity or of
- 1:39:44Speaker 1: modern times for anything to resemble his sweet and passionate music.
- 1:39:50Speaker 1: He possessed that divine wickedness without which perfection itself becomes
- 1:39:56Speaker 1: unthinkable to me. I estimate the value of men of
- 1:40:02Speaker 1: races according to the extent to which they are unable
- 1:40:06Speaker 1: to conceive of a God who has not a dash
- 1:40:10Speaker 1: of the satir in him, and with what mastery he
- 1:40:14Speaker 1: wields his native tongue. One day it will be said
- 1:40:19Speaker 1: of hine and me that we were by far the
- 1:40:22Speaker 1: greatest artists of the German language that have ever existed,
- 1:40:28Speaker 1: and that we left all the efforts that mere Germans
- 1:40:31Speaker 1: made in this language an incalculable distance behind us. I
- 1:40:38Speaker 1: must be profoundly related to Byron's Manfried. Of all the
- 1:40:43Speaker 1: dark abysses in this work I found the counterparts in
- 1:40:46Speaker 1: my own soul. At the age of thirteen, I was
- 1:40:51Speaker 1: ripe for this book.
- 1:40:53Speaker 2: Words fail me.
- 1:40:54Speaker 1: I have only a look for those who dare to
- 1:40:57Speaker 1: utter the name of Faust. In the presence of Manfried.
- 1:41:02Speaker 1: The Germans are incapable of conceiving anything sublime. For the
- 1:41:06Speaker 1: proof of this, look at Schumann. Out of anger, for
- 1:41:11Speaker 1: this mawkish Saxon, I once deliberately composed a counter overture
- 1:41:16Speaker 1: to Manfred, of which Hans von Bulau declared he had
- 1:41:21Speaker 1: never seen the like before on paper. Such compositions amounted
- 1:41:27Speaker 1: to a violation of uturp. When I cast about me
- 1:41:31Speaker 1: for my highest formula of Shakespeare, I can invariably find
- 1:41:35Speaker 1: but this one that he conceived the type of Caesar.
- 1:41:41Speaker 1: Such things a man cannot guess either he is a
- 1:41:44Speaker 1: thing or he is not. The great poet draws his
- 1:41:49Speaker 1: creations only from out of his own reality. This is
- 1:41:54Speaker 1: so to such an extent that often, after a lapse
- 1:41:57Speaker 1: of time, he can no longer in chu cure his
- 1:42:00Speaker 1: own work. After casting a glance between the pages of
- 1:42:05Speaker 1: my Zarathustra, I pace my room to and fro for
- 1:42:09Speaker 1: half an hour at a time, I unable to overcome
- 1:42:12Speaker 1: an insufferable fit of tears. I know of no more
- 1:42:16Speaker 1: heart rending reading than Shakespeare. How a man must have
- 1:42:20Speaker 1: suffered to be so much in need of playing the clown?
- 1:42:25Speaker 1: Is Hamlet understood? It is not doubt but certitude that
- 1:42:31Speaker 1: drives one mad. But in order to feel this, one
- 1:42:36Speaker 1: must be profound, one must be an abyss and philosopher.
- 1:42:41Speaker 1: We all fear the truth and to make a confession.
- 1:42:46Speaker 1: I feel instinctively certain and convinced that Lord Bacon is
- 1:42:51Speaker 1: the originator, the self torturer of this most sinister kind
- 1:42:55Speaker 1: of literature. What do I care about the miserable gabble
- 1:42:59Speaker 1: of American modlers and blockheads. But the power for the
- 1:43:04Speaker 1: greatest realism in vision is not only compatible with the
- 1:43:09Speaker 1: greatest realism indeeds with a monstrous indeeds with crime, it
- 1:43:16Speaker 1: actually presupposes the latter. We do not know half enough
- 1:43:22Speaker 1: about Lord Bacon, the first realist in all the highest
- 1:43:26Speaker 1: acceptation of this word. To be sure of everything he did,
- 1:43:32Speaker 1: everything he willed, and everything he experienced in his inmost soul.
- 1:43:38Speaker 1: Let the critics go to hell. Suppose I had christened
- 1:43:43Speaker 1: my Zarathustra with a name not my own. Let us say,
- 1:43:47Speaker 1: with Richard Wagner's name, the acumen of two thousand years
- 1:43:52Speaker 1: would not have sufficed to guess that the author of
- 1:43:56Speaker 1: human all to human was the visionary of Zarathustra.
- 1:44:03Speaker 2: Five.
- 1:44:05Speaker 1: As I am here speaking of the recreations of my life,
- 1:44:10Speaker 1: I feel I must express a word or two of
- 1:44:12Speaker 1: gratitude for that which has refreshed me by far the
- 1:44:16Speaker 1: most heartily and most profoundly. This, without the slightest doubt,
- 1:44:23Speaker 1: was my intimate relationship with Richard Wagner.
- 1:44:27Speaker 2: All my other.
- 1:44:28Speaker 1: Relationships with men I treat quite lightly. But I would
- 1:44:33Speaker 1: not have the days I spent at Tribushen, those days
- 1:44:37Speaker 1: of confidence, of cheerfulness, of sublime flashes, and of profound moments,
- 1:44:43Speaker 1: blotted from my life at any price. I know not
- 1:44:48Speaker 1: what Wagner may have been for others, but no cloud
- 1:44:52Speaker 1: ever darkened hour sky, and this brings me back again
- 1:44:56Speaker 1: to France. I have no arguments against Wagnerites and hoc
- 1:45:02Speaker 1: genus omni who believe that they do honor to Wagner
- 1:45:07Speaker 1: by believing him to be like themselves. For such people
- 1:45:11Speaker 1: I have only a contemptuous curl of my lip, with
- 1:45:16Speaker 1: a nature like mine which is so strange to everything
- 1:45:19Speaker 1: Teutonic that even the presence of a German retards my digestion.
- 1:45:25Speaker 1: My first meeting with Wagner was the first moment in
- 1:45:29Speaker 1: my life in which I breathed freely. I felt him,
- 1:45:33Speaker 1: I honored him as a foreigner as the opposite and
- 1:45:38Speaker 1: the incarnate contradiction of all German virtues. We who, as
- 1:45:44Speaker 1: children breathed the marshy atmosphere of the fifties, are necessarily
- 1:45:48Speaker 1: pessimists in regard to the concept German. We cannot be
- 1:45:54Speaker 1: anything else than revolutionariess. We can assent to no state
- 1:45:58Speaker 1: of affairs which all allows the canting bigot to be
- 1:46:02Speaker 1: at the top. I care not a jot whether this
- 1:46:07Speaker 1: canting bigot acts in different colors today, whether he dresses
- 1:46:11Speaker 1: in scarlet or dons a uniform of a Husser translator's footnote,
- 1:46:17Speaker 1: the favorite uniform of the German Emperor William the Second,
- 1:46:22Speaker 1: and translator's note very well. Then Wagner was a revolutionary.
- 1:46:28Speaker 1: He fled from the Germans as an artist. A man
- 1:46:32Speaker 1: has no home in Europe save in Paris. That subtlety
- 1:46:37Speaker 1: of all the five senses which Wagner's art presupposes, those
- 1:46:42Speaker 1: fingers that can detect slight gradations, psychological morbidities, all these
- 1:46:48Speaker 1: things can only be found in Paris. Nowhere else can
- 1:46:52Speaker 1: you meet with this passion for questions of form, this
- 1:46:56Speaker 1: earnestness in matters of mis use, which is the Parisian
- 1:47:02Speaker 1: earnestness par excellence.
- 1:47:06Speaker 2: In Germany.
- 1:47:08Speaker 1: No one has any idea of the tremendous ambition that
- 1:47:11Speaker 1: fills the heart of a Parisian artist. The German is
- 1:47:15Speaker 1: a good fellow. Wagner was by no means a good fellow.
- 1:47:22Speaker 1: But I have already said quite enough on the subject
- 1:47:25Speaker 1: of Wagner's real nature see Beyond Good and Evil Aphorism
- 1:47:30Speaker 1: two six nine. And about those to whom he is
- 1:47:34Speaker 1: most closely related. He is one of the late French Romanticists,
- 1:47:40Speaker 1: that high, soaring and heaven aspiring band of artists like
- 1:47:44Speaker 1: Delacroix and Burlios, who in their inmost natures are sick
- 1:47:50Speaker 1: and incurable, and who are all fanatics of expression and
- 1:47:54Speaker 1: virtuosos through and through Who in sooth was the first
- 1:48:00Speaker 1: intelligent follower of Wagner, Charles Baudelaire, the very man who
- 1:48:06Speaker 1: first understood de Lacroix, that typical decadence in whom a
- 1:48:13Speaker 1: whole generation of artists saw their reflection. He was perhaps
- 1:48:18Speaker 1: the last of them two. What is it that I
- 1:48:21Speaker 1: have never forgiven Wagner the fact that he condescended to
- 1:48:26Speaker 1: the Germans, that he became a German imperialist, wherever Germany spreads,
- 1:48:33Speaker 1: she ruins culture.
- 1:48:37Speaker 2: Six.
- 1:48:39Speaker 1: Taking everything into consideration, I could never have survived my
- 1:48:44Speaker 1: youth without Wagnerian music, for I was condemned to the
- 1:48:50Speaker 1: society of Germans. If a man wished to get rid
- 1:48:54Speaker 1: of a feeling of insufferable oppression, he has to take
- 1:48:58Speaker 1: to Hashish. Well, I had to take to Wagner. Wagner
- 1:49:04Speaker 1: is the counter poison to everything essentially German. The fact
- 1:49:09Speaker 1: that he is a poison too, I do not deny
- 1:49:14Speaker 1: from the moment that Tristan was arranged for the piano,
- 1:49:18Speaker 1: all honor to you, Hair von Bulow. I was a Wagnerite.
- 1:49:24Speaker 1: Wagner's previous works seemed beneath me. They were too commonplace,
- 1:49:31Speaker 1: too German. But to this day I am still seeking
- 1:49:37Speaker 1: for a work which will be a match to Tristan
- 1:49:41Speaker 1: in dangerous fascination and possess the same gruesome and does
- 1:49:46Speaker 1: a quality of infinity. I seek among all the arts
- 1:49:52Speaker 1: in Vain, all the quaint features of Leonardo da Vinci's
- 1:49:57Speaker 1: work lose their charm at the sound of the first bar.
- 1:50:01Speaker 1: In Tristan. This work is, without question Wagner's nonplus ultra.
- 1:50:08Speaker 1: After its creation, the composition of the master singers and
- 1:50:14Speaker 1: of the Ring was a relaxation to him to become
- 1:50:18Speaker 1: more healthy. This, in a nature like Wagner's, amounts to
- 1:50:23Speaker 1: going backwards. The curiosity of the psychologist is so great
- 1:50:28Speaker 1: in me that I regard it as quite a special
- 1:50:31Speaker 1: privilege to have lived at the right time, and to
- 1:50:35Speaker 1: have lived precisely among Germans. In order to be ripe
- 1:50:40Speaker 1: for this work. The world must indeed be empty for
- 1:50:44Speaker 1: him who has never been unhealthy enough for this infernal voluptuousness.
- 1:50:52Speaker 1: It is allowable, it is even imperative to employ a
- 1:50:56Speaker 1: mystic formula for this purpose. I suppose I know better
- 1:51:01Speaker 1: than anyone the prodigious feats of which Wagner was capable,
- 1:51:07Speaker 1: the fifty worlds of strange exoduses to which no one
- 1:51:11Speaker 1: else had wings to soar. And as I am alive
- 1:51:16Speaker 1: today and strong enough to turn even the most suspicious
- 1:51:21Speaker 1: and most dangerous things to my own advantage, and thus
- 1:51:25Speaker 1: to grow stronger, I declare Wagner to have been the
- 1:51:30Speaker 1: greatest benefactor of my life. The bond which unites us
- 1:51:36Speaker 1: is the fact that we have suffered greater agony, even
- 1:51:40Speaker 1: at each other's hands, than most men are able to
- 1:51:44Speaker 1: bear nowadays, and this will always keep our names associated
- 1:51:49Speaker 1: in the minds of men. Four. Just as Wagner is
- 1:51:54Speaker 1: merely a misunderstanding among Germans, so in truth am I
- 1:52:01Speaker 1: and ever will be. You lack two centuries of psychological
- 1:52:06Speaker 1: and artistic discipline, my dear countrymen, but you can never
- 1:52:12Speaker 1: recover the time lost. Seven to the most exceptional of
- 1:52:20Speaker 1: my readers, I should like to say just one word
- 1:52:24Speaker 1: about what I really exact from music. It must be
- 1:52:29Speaker 1: cheerful and yet profound, like an October afternoon. It must
- 1:52:35Speaker 1: be original, exuberant and tender, and like a dainty soft
- 1:52:41Speaker 1: woman in roguishness and grace. I shall never admit that
- 1:52:47Speaker 1: a German can understand what music is. Those musicians who
- 1:52:53Speaker 1: are called German, the greatest and most famous foremost, are
- 1:52:58Speaker 1: all foreigners, either Slavs, Croats, Italians, dutch Men or Jews,
- 1:53:07Speaker 1: or else like Heinrich Schultz, Bark and Handle. They are
- 1:53:12Speaker 1: Germans of a strong race which is now extinct. For
- 1:53:17Speaker 1: my own part, I have still enough of the pole
- 1:53:21Speaker 1: left in me to let all other music go, if
- 1:53:25Speaker 1: only I can keep chopin. For three reasons, I would
- 1:53:31Speaker 1: accept Wagner's Siegfried Edel, and perhaps also one or two
- 1:53:36Speaker 1: things of Liszts, who excelled all other musicians in the
- 1:53:41Speaker 1: noble tone of his orchestration. And finally, everything that has
- 1:53:46Speaker 1: been produced beyond the Alps this side of the Alps.
- 1:53:53Speaker 1: Translator's note. In the later years of his life, Nietzsche
- 1:53:57Speaker 1: practically made Italy his home. And Translator's note, I could
- 1:54:03Speaker 1: not possibly dispense with Rossini as still less with my
- 1:54:08Speaker 1: southern soul in music, the work of my Venetian maestro
- 1:54:14Speaker 1: Pietro Gasti. And when I say beyond the Alps, all
- 1:54:20Speaker 1: I really mean is Venice. If I try to find
- 1:54:24Speaker 1: a new word for music, I can never find any
- 1:54:27Speaker 1: other than Venice. I know not how to draw any
- 1:54:31Speaker 1: distinction between tears and music. I do not know how
- 1:54:37Speaker 1: to think either of joy or of the South without
- 1:54:41Speaker 1: a shudder of fear. On the bridge I stood lately
- 1:54:46Speaker 1: in gloomy night, came a distant song in golden drops.
- 1:54:51Speaker 1: It rolled over the glittering rim away music. Gondolas lights
- 1:55:01Speaker 1: swam far forth in the gloom. A stringed instrument. My
- 1:55:07Speaker 1: soul sang imperceptibly moved a gondolas song by stealth, gleaming
- 1:55:15Speaker 1: for gaudy blessedness, hearkened any Thereto.
- 1:55:22Speaker 2: Eight.
- 1:55:23Speaker 1: In all these things, in the choice of food, place, climate,
- 1:55:28Speaker 1: and recreation, the instinct of self preservation is dominant, and
- 1:55:34Speaker 1: this instinct manifests itself with the least ambiguity when it
- 1:55:38Speaker 1: acts as an instinct of defense. To close one's eyes
- 1:55:43Speaker 1: to much, to seal one's ears too much, to keep
- 1:55:48Speaker 1: certain things at a distance. This is the first principle
- 1:55:53Speaker 1: of prudence, the first proof of the fact that a
- 1:55:57Speaker 1: man is not an accident but an assess. The popular
- 1:56:02Speaker 1: word for this instinct of defense is taste. A man's
- 1:56:07Speaker 1: imperative command is not only to say no in cases
- 1:56:13Speaker 1: where yes would be a sign of disinterestedness, but also
- 1:56:18Speaker 1: to say no as seldom as possible. One must part
- 1:56:24Speaker 1: with all that which compels one to repeat no with
- 1:56:28Speaker 1: ever greater frequency. The rationale of this principle is that
- 1:56:33Speaker 1: all discharges of defensive forces, however slight they may be,
- 1:56:38Speaker 1: involve enormous and absolutely superfluous losses when they become regular
- 1:56:44Speaker 1: and habitual. Our greatest expenditure of strength is made up
- 1:56:50Speaker 1: of those small and most frequent discharges of it. The
- 1:56:55Speaker 1: act of keeping things off, of holding them at a
- 1:56:57Speaker 1: distance amounts to a dis charge of strength. Do not
- 1:57:02Speaker 1: deceive yourselves on this point, and an expenditure of energy
- 1:57:07Speaker 1: directed at purely negative ends. Simply by being compelled to
- 1:57:13Speaker 1: keep constantly on his guard, a man may grow so
- 1:57:17Speaker 1: weak as to be unable any longer to defend himself.
- 1:57:22Speaker 1: Suppose I were to step out of my house, and
- 1:57:25Speaker 1: instead of the quiet and aristocratic city of Turin, I
- 1:57:29Speaker 1: was to find a German provincial town. My instinct would
- 1:57:34Speaker 1: have to brace itself together in order to repel all
- 1:57:38Speaker 1: that which would pour in upon it from this crushed
- 1:57:42Speaker 1: down and cowardly world. Or suppose I was to find
- 1:57:47Speaker 1: a large German city, that structure of vice in which
- 1:57:51Speaker 1: nothing grows, but where every single thing, whether good or bad,
- 1:57:57Speaker 1: is squeezed in from outside. In such circumstances, should I
- 1:58:04Speaker 1: not be compelled to become a hedgehog.
- 1:58:07Speaker 2: But to have prickles.
- 1:58:09Speaker 1: Amounts to a squandering of strength. They even constitute a
- 1:58:14Speaker 1: twofold luxury, when if only we choose to do so,
- 1:58:19Speaker 1: we could dispense with them and open our hands instead.
- 1:58:27Speaker 1: Another form of prudence and self defense consists in trying
- 1:58:31Speaker 1: to react as seldom as possible and to keep one's
- 1:58:35Speaker 1: self aloof from those circumstances and conditions wherein one would
- 1:58:40Speaker 1: be condemned, as it were, to suspend one's liberty and
- 1:58:45Speaker 1: one's initiative and become a mere reacting medium. As an
- 1:58:51Speaker 1: example of this, I pointed the intercourse with books. The scholar,
- 1:58:56Speaker 1: who in sooth does little else than handle books with
- 1:59:01Speaker 1: the philologist of average attainments, the number may amount to
- 1:59:06Speaker 1: two hundred a day, ultimately forgets entirely and completely the
- 1:59:11Speaker 1: capacity of thinking for himself. When he has not a
- 1:59:16Speaker 1: book between his fingers, he cannot think. When he thinks,
- 1:59:21Speaker 1: he responds to a stimulus a thought he has read. Finally,
- 1:59:26Speaker 1: all he does is to react. The scholar exhausts his
- 1:59:31Speaker 1: whole strength in saying either yes or no to matter
- 1:59:35Speaker 1: which has already been thought out, or in criticizing it.
- 1:59:40Speaker 1: He is no longer capable of thought on his own account.
- 1:59:45Speaker 1: In him, the instinct of self defense has decayed, Otherwise
- 1:59:50Speaker 1: he would defend himself against books. The scholar is a decadent.
- 1:59:56Speaker 1: With my own eyes, I have seen gifted, richly endowed
- 2:00:00Speaker 1: and free spirited natures already read to ruins at thirty
- 2:00:05Speaker 1: and mere wax vestus that have to be rubbed before
- 2:00:09Speaker 1: they can give off any sparks or thoughts. Two set
- 2:00:14Speaker 1: too early in the morning, at the break of day,
- 2:00:18Speaker 1: in all the fullness and dawn of one's strength, and
- 2:00:22Speaker 1: to read a book. This I call positively vicious. Nine.
- 2:00:33Speaker 1: At this point I can no longer evade a direct
- 2:00:36Speaker 1: answer to the question how one becomes what one is?
- 2:00:41Speaker 1: And in giving it I shall have to touch upon
- 2:00:45Speaker 1: that masterpiece in art of self preservation, which is selfishness.
- 2:00:53Speaker 1: Granted that one's life task, the determination and the fate
- 2:00:57Speaker 1: of one's life task, greatly exceeds the average measure of
- 2:01:02Speaker 1: such things. Nothing more dangerous could be conceived than to
- 2:01:07Speaker 1: come face to face with one's self by the side
- 2:01:10Speaker 1: of this life task. The fact that one becomes what
- 2:01:16Speaker 1: one is presupposes that one has not the remotest suspicion
- 2:01:21Speaker 1: of what one is. From this standpoint, even the blunders
- 2:01:26Speaker 1: of one's life have their own meaning and value, the
- 2:01:30Speaker 1: temporary deviations and aberrations, the moments of hesitation and of modesty,
- 2:01:37Speaker 1: the earnestness wasted upon duties which lie outside the actual
- 2:01:42Speaker 1: life task. In these matters, great wisdom, perhaps even the
- 2:01:48Speaker 1: highest wisdom, comes into activity in these circumstances in which
- 2:01:55Speaker 1: nus giertypsum would be the.
- 2:01:57Speaker 2: Sure road to ruin.
- 2:02:00Speaker 1: For getting oneself, misunderstanding oneself, belittling oneself, narrowing oneself, and
- 2:02:08Speaker 1: making oneself mediocre amount to reason itself expressed morally. To
- 2:02:15Speaker 1: love one's neighbor, and to live for others and for
- 2:02:19Speaker 1: other things may be the means of protection employed to
- 2:02:24Speaker 1: maintain the highest kind of egotism. This is the exceptional
- 2:02:30Speaker 1: case in which I, contrary to my principle and conviction,
- 2:02:35Speaker 1: take the side of the altruistic instincts, for here they
- 2:02:40Speaker 1: are concerned in subserving selfishness and self discipline the whole
- 2:02:46Speaker 1: surface of consciousness, For consciousness is a surface must be
- 2:02:52Speaker 1: kept free from any one of the great imperatives. Beware,
- 2:02:57Speaker 1: even of every striking word, of every striking attitude. They
- 2:03:02Speaker 1: are also many risks which the instinct runs of understanding
- 2:03:07Speaker 1: itself too soon. Meanwhile, the organizing idea, which is destined
- 2:03:15Speaker 1: to become master, grows and continues to grow into the
- 2:03:19Speaker 1: depths it begins to command. It leads you slowly back
- 2:03:25Speaker 1: from your deviations and aberrations. It prepares individual qualities and
- 2:03:32Speaker 1: capacities which one day will make themselves felt as indispensable
- 2:03:37Speaker 1: to the whole of your task. Step by step it
- 2:03:42Speaker 1: cultivates all the serviceable faculties before it even whispers a
- 2:03:47Speaker 1: word concerning the dominant task, the goal, the object, and
- 2:03:52Speaker 1: the meaning of it. All looked at from this standpoint,
- 2:03:57Speaker 1: my life is simply amazing. For the task of transvaluing values.
- 2:04:03Speaker 1: More capacities were needful, Perhaps then could well be found
- 2:04:08Speaker 1: side by side in one individual. Above all antagonistic capacities,
- 2:04:15Speaker 1: which had to be free from the mutual strife and
- 2:04:18Speaker 1: destruction which they involve. An order of rank among capacities, distance,
- 2:04:26Speaker 1: the art of separating without creating hostility, to refrain from
- 2:04:31Speaker 1: confounding things, to keep from reconciling things, to possess enormous multifariousness,
- 2:04:40Speaker 1: and yet to be the reverse of chaos. All this
- 2:04:45Speaker 1: was the first condition. The long secret work, and the
- 2:04:50Speaker 1: artistic mastery of my instinct. Its superior guardianship, manifested itself
- 2:04:57Speaker 1: with such exceeding strength that not once did I ever
- 2:05:01Speaker 1: dream of what was growing within me, until suddenly all
- 2:05:05Speaker 1: my capacities were ripe and one day burst forth in
- 2:05:10Speaker 1: all the perfection of their highest bloom. I cannot remember
- 2:05:15Speaker 1: ever having exerted myself. I can point to no trace
- 2:05:19Speaker 1: of struggle.
- 2:05:20Speaker 2: In my life.
- 2:05:22Speaker 1: I am the reverse of a heroic nature to will something,
- 2:05:28Speaker 1: to strive after something, to have an aim, or a
- 2:05:32Speaker 1: desire in my mind. I know none of these things
- 2:05:36Speaker 1: from experience. Even at this moment, I look out upon
- 2:05:41Speaker 1: my future, a broad future, as upon a calm sea.
- 2:05:47Speaker 2: No sigh of longing makes a ripple on its surface.
- 2:05:51Speaker 1: I have not the slightest wish that anything should be
- 2:05:54Speaker 1: otherwise than it is. I myself would not be otherwise.
- 2:06:00Speaker 1: But in this matter I have always been the same.
- 2:06:04Speaker 1: I have never had a desire. A man who after
- 2:06:09Speaker 1: his four and fortieth year can say that he has
- 2:06:13Speaker 1: never bothered himself about honors, women, or money, not that
- 2:06:19Speaker 1: they did not come his way. It was thus that
- 2:06:22Speaker 1: I became one day a university professor. I never had
- 2:06:27Speaker 1: the remotest idea of such a thing, for I was
- 2:06:31Speaker 1: scarcely four and twenty years of age. In the same way,
- 2:06:36Speaker 1: two years previously, I had one day become a philologist.
- 2:06:41Speaker 1: In the sense that my first philological work, my start
- 2:06:46Speaker 1: in every way was expressly obtained by my master Ritschau
- 2:06:51Speaker 1: for publication in his Rhini Chez Museum. Translator's note see
- 2:06:57Speaker 1: note on page thirty seven. Translator's note narrator's note. This
- 2:07:04Speaker 1: refers to the footnote in Aphorism three and narrator's note
- 2:07:10Speaker 1: of Richel. And I say it in all Reverence was
- 2:07:15Speaker 1: the only genial scholar that I have ever met. He
- 2:07:19Speaker 1: possessed that pleasant kind of depravity which distinguishes us Thuringians,
- 2:07:25Speaker 1: and which makes even a German sympathetic. Even in the
- 2:07:29Speaker 1: pursuit of truth we prefer to evade ourselves of roundabout ways.
- 2:07:34Speaker 1: In saying this, I do not mean to underestimate in
- 2:07:37Speaker 1: any way my Thuringian brother, the intelligent Leopold von rank.
- 2:07:45Speaker 2: Ten.
- 2:07:47Speaker 1: You may be wondering why I should actually have related
- 2:07:51Speaker 1: all these trivial and according to traditional accounts, in significant
- 2:07:57Speaker 1: details to you. Such ant can but tell against me more,
- 2:08:03Speaker 1: particularly if I am fated to figure in great causes
- 2:08:08Speaker 1: to this are replied that these trivial matters diet, locality, climate,
- 2:08:15Speaker 1: and one's mode of recreation, the whole causistry of self love,
- 2:08:21Speaker 1: are inconceivably more important than all that which has hitherto
- 2:08:26Speaker 1: been held in high esteem. It is precisely in this
- 2:08:31Speaker 1: quarter that we must begin to learn afresh. All those
- 2:08:36Speaker 1: things which mankind has valued with such earnestness heretofore are
- 2:08:42Speaker 1: not even real. They are mere creations of fancy, or
- 2:08:48Speaker 1: more strictly speaking, lies, born of the evil instincts of
- 2:08:52Speaker 1: diseased and in the deepest sense, noxious natures. All the
- 2:08:58Speaker 1: concepts God, soul, virtue, sin, beyond truth, eternal life, but
- 2:09:10Speaker 1: the greatness of human nature, its divinity, were sought for
- 2:09:15Speaker 1: in them. All questions of politics, of social order, of
- 2:09:20Speaker 1: education have been falsified, root and branch, owing to the
- 2:09:25Speaker 1: fact that the most noxious men have been taken for
- 2:09:29Speaker 1: great men, and that people were taught to despise the
- 2:09:33Speaker 1: small things, or rather the fundamental things of life. If
- 2:09:40Speaker 1: I now choose to compare myself with those creatures who
- 2:09:44Speaker 1: have hitherto been honored as the first among men, the
- 2:09:49Speaker 1: difference becomes obvious. I do not reckon the so called
- 2:09:54Speaker 1: first men, even as human beings. For me, they are
- 2:09:58Speaker 1: the excrements of man d the products of disease, and
- 2:10:03Speaker 1: of the instincts of revenge. They are so many monsters
- 2:10:08Speaker 1: laden with rottenness, so many hopeless incurables who avenge themselves
- 2:10:14Speaker 1: on life. I wish to be the opposite of these people.
- 2:10:20Speaker 1: It is my privilege to have the very sharpest discernment
- 2:10:24Speaker 1: for every sign of healthy instincts. There is no such
- 2:10:29Speaker 1: thing as a morbid trait in me. Even in times
- 2:10:34Speaker 1: of serious illness, I have never grown morbid. You might
- 2:10:39Speaker 1: seek in vain for a trace of fanaticism in my nature.
- 2:10:44Speaker 1: No one can point to any moment of my life
- 2:10:47Speaker 1: in which I have assumed either an arrogant or a
- 2:10:51Speaker 1: pathetic attitude. Pathetic attitudes are not in keeping with greatness.
- 2:10:57Speaker 1: He who needs attitudes is false. Beware of all picturesque men.
- 2:11:04Speaker 1: Life was easy, in fact easiest to me in those
- 2:11:09Speaker 1: periods when it exacted the heaviest duties from me. Whatever
- 2:11:14Speaker 1: could have seen me during the seventy days of this autumn,
- 2:11:18Speaker 1: when without interruption I did a host of things of
- 2:11:22Speaker 1: the highest rank, things that no man can do nowadays,
- 2:11:27Speaker 1: with a sense of responsibility for all the ages yet
- 2:11:31Speaker 1: to come, would have noticed no sign of tension in
- 2:11:35Speaker 1: my condition, but rather a state of overflowing freshness and
- 2:11:40Speaker 1: good cheer. Never have I eaten with more pleasant sensations.
- 2:11:46Speaker 1: Never has my sleep been better, I know of no
- 2:11:50Speaker 1: other manner of dealing with great tasks than as play.
- 2:11:55Speaker 1: This is a sign of greatness, is an essential prequisite.
- 2:12:01Speaker 1: The slightest constraint, the somber main, any hard accent in
- 2:12:06Speaker 1: the voice. All these things are objections to a man,
- 2:12:11Speaker 1: But how much more to his work. One must not
- 2:12:16Speaker 1: have nerves. Even to suffer from solitude is an objection.
- 2:12:23Speaker 1: The only thing I have always suffered from is the multitude.
- 2:12:28Speaker 1: Translator's note. The German words are einsome kite and feel
- 2:12:35Speaker 1: sam kite. The latter was coined by Nietzsche. The English
- 2:12:40Speaker 1: words multitude should therefore be understood as signifying multifarious instincts
- 2:12:47Speaker 1: and gifts, which, in Nietzsche strove for ascendency and caused
- 2:12:53Speaker 1: him more suffering than any solitude. Complexity of this sort,
- 2:12:58Speaker 1: held in check by a domain and instinct, as a
- 2:13:01Speaker 1: Nieture's case, is of course the only possible basis for
- 2:13:05Speaker 1: an artistic nature. And translator's note. At an absurdly tender age.
- 2:13:12Speaker 1: In fact, when I was seven years old, I already
- 2:13:16Speaker 1: knew that no human speech would ever reach me. Did
- 2:13:20Speaker 1: any one ever see me sad? On that account? At
- 2:13:25Speaker 1: present I still possess the same affability towards everybody. I
- 2:13:30Speaker 1: am even full of consideration for the lowest. In all this,
- 2:13:35Speaker 1: there is not an atom of haughtiness or of secret contempt.
- 2:13:40Speaker 1: He whom I despised soon guesses that he is despised
- 2:13:44Speaker 1: by me. The very fact of MY existence is enough
- 2:13:48Speaker 1: to rouse indignation in all those who have polluted blood
- 2:13:52Speaker 1: in their veins. My formula for greatness in man is
- 2:13:58Speaker 1: our more fatty, the fact that a man wishes nothing
- 2:14:02Speaker 1: to be different, either in front of him or behind him,
- 2:14:06Speaker 1: or for all eternity. Not only must the necessary be born,
- 2:14:13Speaker 1: and on no account concealed. All idealism is faltered in
- 2:14:18Speaker 1: the face of necessity. But I must also be loved.
- 2:14:27Speaker 1: End of Why I am so clever? Why I write
- 2:14:32Speaker 1: such excellent books? Part One one? I am one thing,
- 2:14:41Speaker 1: My creations are another. Here, before I speak of the
- 2:14:45Speaker 1: books themselves, I shall touch upon the question of the
- 2:14:50Speaker 1: understanding and misunderstanding with which they have met. I shall
- 2:14:55Speaker 1: proceed to do this in as perfunctory a manner as
- 2:15:00Speaker 1: the occasion demands. For the time has by no means
- 2:15:04Speaker 1: come for this question. My time has not yet come either.
- 2:15:10Speaker 1: Some men are born posthumously one day institutions will be
- 2:15:16Speaker 1: needed in which men will live and teach as I
- 2:15:21Speaker 1: understand living and teaching. May be also that by that
- 2:15:26Speaker 1: time chairs will be founded and endowed for the interpretation
- 2:15:31Speaker 1: of Zarathustra. But I should regard it as a complete
- 2:15:37Speaker 1: contradiction of myself if I expect it to find ears
- 2:15:42Speaker 1: and eyes for my truths to day.
- 2:15:45Speaker 2: The fact that.
- 2:15:47Speaker 1: No one listens to me, that no one knows how
- 2:15:50Speaker 1: to receive at my hands to day is not only comprehensible,
- 2:15:56Speaker 1: it seems to me quite the proper thing. I do
- 2:16:00Speaker 1: not wish to be mistaken for another. And to this end,
- 2:16:05Speaker 1: I must not mistake myself to repeat what I have
- 2:16:09Speaker 1: already said. I can point to but few instances of
- 2:16:13Speaker 1: ill will in my life, and as for literary ill will,
- 2:16:18Speaker 1: I could scarcely mention a single example of it. On
- 2:16:22Speaker 1: the other hand, I have met with far too much
- 2:16:26Speaker 1: pure foolery. It seems to me that take up one
- 2:16:32Speaker 1: of my books is one of the rarest honors that
- 2:16:35Speaker 1: a man can pay himself, even supposing that he put
- 2:16:40Speaker 1: his shoes off from his feet beforehand. Not to mention boots.
- 2:16:47Speaker 1: When on one occasion, doctor Heinrich von Stein honestly complained
- 2:16:52Speaker 1: that he could not understand a word of my Zarathustra.
- 2:16:56Speaker 1: I said to him that this was just as it
- 2:17:00Speaker 1: should be. To have understood six sentences in that book,
- 2:17:05Speaker 1: that is to say, to have lived them, raises a
- 2:17:09Speaker 1: man to a higher level among mortals than modern man
- 2:17:13Speaker 1: can attain. With this feeling of distance, how could I
- 2:17:18Speaker 1: even wish to be read by the moderns whom I
- 2:17:22Speaker 1: know my triumph is just the opposite of what Schopenhauer's was.
- 2:17:28Speaker 1: I say, non legere, non legard, not that I should
- 2:17:35Speaker 1: like to underestimate the pleasure I have derived from the
- 2:17:39Speaker 1: innocence with which my works have been frequently contradicted. As
- 2:17:45Speaker 1: late as last summer, at a time when I was attempting,
- 2:17:50Speaker 1: perhaps by means of my weighty all to weighty literature,
- 2:17:55Speaker 1: to throw the rest of literature off its balance, a
- 2:17:58Speaker 1: sudden professor of Berlin University kindly gave me to understand
- 2:18:05Speaker 1: that I ought, really to make use of a different form.
- 2:18:11Speaker 1: No one could read such stuff as I wrote. Finally,
- 2:18:17Speaker 1: it was not Germany but Switzerland that presented me with
- 2:18:21Speaker 1: the two most extreme cases. An essay on Beyond Good
- 2:18:27Speaker 1: and Evil by doctor foul Wittmann in the paper called
- 2:18:32Speaker 1: the Bunt under the heading Nietzsche's Dangerous Book and a
- 2:18:37Speaker 1: general account of all my works from the pen of
- 2:18:41Speaker 1: Herr Kyl Spitteler, also in the Bunt, constitute a maximum
- 2:18:47Speaker 1: in my life. I shall not say of what the
- 2:18:52Speaker 1: latter treated my Zarathustra, for instance, as advanced exercises in style,
- 2:19:00Speaker 1: and express the wish that later on I might try
- 2:19:03Speaker 1: and attend to the question of substance as well. Doctor
- 2:19:08Speaker 1: Wildman assured me of this respect for the courage I
- 2:19:13Speaker 1: showed in endeavoring to abolish all decent feeling. Thanks to
- 2:19:18Speaker 1: a little trick of destiny. Every sentence in these criticisms
- 2:19:23Speaker 1: seemed with a consistency that I could but admire to
- 2:19:28Speaker 1: be an inverted truth. In fact, it was most remarkable
- 2:19:33Speaker 1: that all one had to do was to transvalue all
- 2:19:37Speaker 1: values in order to hit the nail on the head
- 2:19:41Speaker 1: with regard to me, instead of striking my head with
- 2:19:45Speaker 1: the nail, I am more particularly anxious therefore to discover
- 2:19:51Speaker 1: an explanation. After all, no one can draw more out
- 2:19:58Speaker 1: of things books in included, than he already knows. A
- 2:20:03Speaker 1: man has no ears for that to which experience has
- 2:20:08Speaker 1: given him no access to Take an extreme case, Suppose
- 2:20:14Speaker 1: a book contains simply incidents which lie quite outside the
- 2:20:19Speaker 1: range of general or even rare experience. Suppose it to
- 2:20:25Speaker 1: be the first language to express a whole series of experiences.
- 2:20:31Speaker 1: In this case, nothing it contains will really be heard
- 2:20:34Speaker 1: at all, and thanks to an acoustic delusion, people will
- 2:20:40Speaker 1: believe that where nothing is heard, there is nothing to hear. This,
- 2:20:49Speaker 1: at least has been my usual experience, and proves, if
- 2:20:53Speaker 1: you will, the originality of my experience. He who thought
- 2:20:59Speaker 1: he had understood something in my work had, as a
- 2:21:03Speaker 1: rule I adjusted something in it to his own image,
- 2:21:07Speaker 1: not infrequently the very opposite of myself an idealist. For instance,
- 2:21:14Speaker 1: he who understood nothing in my work would deny that
- 2:21:18Speaker 1: I was worth considering at all. The word superman, which
- 2:21:25Speaker 1: designates a type of man that would be one of
- 2:21:28Speaker 1: nature's rarest and luckiest strokes as opposed to modern men,
- 2:21:34Speaker 1: to good men, to Christians and other nihilists, A word
- 2:21:40Speaker 1: which in the mouth of Zarathustra, the annihilator of morality,
- 2:21:46Speaker 1: acquires a very profound meaning, is understood almost everywhere, and
- 2:21:52Speaker 1: with perfect innocence. In light of those values to which
- 2:21:57Speaker 1: a flat contradiction was made manifest in the figure of Zarathustra,
- 2:22:03Speaker 1: that is to say, as an ideal type, a higher
- 2:22:07Speaker 1: kind of man, half saint and half genius. Other learned
- 2:22:15Speaker 1: cattle have suspected me of Darwinism on account of this word.
- 2:22:20Speaker 1: Even the hero cult of that great, unconscious and involuntary
- 2:22:25Speaker 1: swindler Carlyle, a cult which I repudiate with such roguish malice,
- 2:22:32Speaker 1: was recognized in my doctrine. Once when I whispered to
- 2:22:38Speaker 1: a man that he would do better to seek for
- 2:22:42Speaker 1: the superman in a Caesar Borgia than in a Passerphal,
- 2:22:47Speaker 1: he could not believe his ears. The fact that I
- 2:22:51Speaker 1: have been quite free from curiosity in regard to criticism
- 2:22:56Speaker 1: of my books more particularly when they appear in newspapers,
- 2:23:01Speaker 1: will have to be forgiven me. My friends and my
- 2:23:07Speaker 1: publishers know this, and never speak to me of such things.
- 2:23:13Speaker 1: In one particular case, I once saw all the sins
- 2:23:17Speaker 1: that had been committed against a single book. It was
- 2:23:20Speaker 1: beyond good and evil. I could tell you a nice
- 2:23:23Speaker 1: story about it. Is it possible that in the natsional
- 2:23:28Speaker 1: zeitunk a Prussian paper. This comment is for the sake
- 2:23:32Speaker 1: of my foreign readers. For my own part, I beg
- 2:23:36Speaker 1: to state I read only Les Journal dear de bats
- 2:23:41Speaker 1: really and seriously regarded the book as a sign of
- 2:23:45Speaker 1: the times, or a genuine and typical example of Tory
- 2:23:50Speaker 1: philosophy for which the kreuz Zeitunk had not sufficient courage.
- 2:23:58Speaker 1: Translator's footnote, you uinca philosophy. The landed proprietors constitute a
- 2:24:05Speaker 1: dominating class in Prussia, and it is from this class
- 2:24:09Speaker 1: that all officers and higher officials are drawn. The krau
- 2:24:14Speaker 1: Zeitunk is an organ of the Dunker party and Translator's
- 2:24:19Speaker 1: note two. This was said for the benefit of Germans.
- 2:24:27Speaker 1: For everywhere else I have my readers, all of them
- 2:24:31Speaker 1: exceptionally intelligent men, characters that have won their spurs, and
- 2:24:37Speaker 1: that have been reared in high offices and superior duties.
- 2:24:43Speaker 1: I have even real geniuses among my readers. In Vienna,
- 2:24:48Speaker 1: in Saint Petersburg, in Stockholm, in Copenhagen, in Paris and
- 2:24:54Speaker 1: New York. I have been discovered everywhere. I have not
- 2:24:59Speaker 1: yet been discovered in Europe's flat land Germany. And to
- 2:25:05Speaker 1: make a confession, I rejoice much more heartily over those
- 2:25:11Speaker 1: who do not read me over those who have neither
- 2:25:14Speaker 1: heard of my name nor of the word philosophy. But
- 2:25:20Speaker 1: whethersoever I go here in Turin, for instance, every face
- 2:25:25Speaker 1: brightens and softens at the sight of me. A thing
- 2:25:29Speaker 1: that has flattered me more than anything else hitherto is
- 2:25:33Speaker 1: the fact that old market women cannot rest until they
- 2:25:37Speaker 1: have picked out the sweetest of their grapes. For me,
- 2:25:42Speaker 1: to this extent must a man be a philosopher. It
- 2:25:46Speaker 1: is not in Vain that the Poles are considered as
- 2:25:50Speaker 1: the French among the slaves. A charming Russian lady will
- 2:25:56Speaker 1: not be mistaken for a single moment concerning my origin.
- 2:26:01Speaker 1: I am not successful at being pompous. The most I
- 2:26:05Speaker 1: can do is to appear embarrassed. I can think in German,
- 2:26:10Speaker 1: I can feel in German. I can do most things.
- 2:26:14Speaker 1: But this is beyond my powers. My old master Ritzschel,
- 2:26:21Speaker 1: when so far as to declare that I planned even
- 2:26:24Speaker 1: my philosophical treaties after the manner of a Parisian novelist,
- 2:26:31Speaker 1: that I made them absurdly thrilling. In Paris itself, people
- 2:26:36Speaker 1: are surprised at to de mes ardas et finesse, the
- 2:26:42Speaker 1: words are monsieur tains I fear that even in the
- 2:26:47Speaker 1: highest forms of the Diathram, that salt will be found
- 2:26:52Speaker 1: pervading my work, which never becomes insipid, which never becomes German.
- 2:27:00Speaker 1: And that is wit I can do naught else. God
- 2:27:05Speaker 1: help me. Amen, we all know, some of us, even
- 2:27:10Speaker 1: from experience, what a long ears is. Well, then I
- 2:27:16Speaker 1: venture to assert that I have the smallest iss that
- 2:27:20Speaker 1: have ever been seen. This fact is not without interest
- 2:27:24Speaker 1: to women. It seems to me they feel that I
- 2:27:28Speaker 1: understand them better. I am essentially the anti ass and
- 2:27:34Speaker 1: on this account alone a monster in the world's history.
- 2:27:39Speaker 1: In Greek, and not only in Greek, I am the Antichrist.
- 2:27:49Speaker 2: Three.
- 2:27:51Speaker 1: I am to a great extent aware of my privileges
- 2:27:54Speaker 1: as a writer. In one or two cases, it has
- 2:27:59Speaker 1: even been brought home to me how very much the
- 2:28:02Speaker 1: habitual reading of my works spoils a man's taste. Other
- 2:28:08Speaker 1: books simply cannot be endured after mine, and least of
- 2:28:12Speaker 1: all philosophical ones. It is an incomparable distinction to cross
- 2:28:18Speaker 1: the threshold of this noble and subtle world. In order
- 2:28:22Speaker 1: to do so, one must certainly not be a German.
- 2:28:27Speaker 1: It is, in short, a distinction which one must have deserved. He, however,
- 2:28:35Speaker 1: who is related to me through loftiness of will, experiences
- 2:28:39Speaker 1: genuine raptures of understanding in my books. For I swoop
- 2:28:44Speaker 1: down from heights into which no bird has ever sought.
- 2:28:49Speaker 1: I know abysses into which no foot has ever slipped.
- 2:28:54Speaker 1: People have told me that it is impossible to lay
- 2:28:58Speaker 1: down a book of mine that I disturb even the
- 2:29:01Speaker 1: knight's rest. There is no prouder or, at the same
- 2:29:06Speaker 1: time more subtle kind of books. They sometimes attain to
- 2:29:10Speaker 1: the highest pinnacle of earthly endeavor cynicism. To capture their thoughts,
- 2:29:17Speaker 1: A man must have the tenderest fingers as well as
- 2:29:20Speaker 1: the most intrepid fists. Any kind of spiritual decrepitude utterly
- 2:29:27Speaker 1: excludes all intercourse with them, even any kind of dyspepsia.
- 2:29:32Speaker 1: A man must have no nerves, but he must have
- 2:29:36Speaker 1: a cheerful belly. Not only the poverty of a man's
- 2:29:40Speaker 1: soul and its stuffy air excludes all intercourse with them,
- 2:29:46Speaker 1: but also, and to a much greater degree, cowardice, uncleanliness,
- 2:29:52Speaker 1: and secret intestinal revengefulness. A word from my lips suffices
- 2:29:58Speaker 1: to make the color of all evil instincts rush into
- 2:30:01Speaker 1: a face among my acquaintances. I have had a number
- 2:30:07Speaker 1: of experimental subjects in whom I see depicted. All are
- 2:30:12Speaker 1: different and instructively different reactions which follow upon a perusal
- 2:30:18Speaker 1: of my works. Those who will have nothing to do
- 2:30:22Speaker 1: with the contents of my books, as for instance, my
- 2:30:26Speaker 1: so called friends, assume an impersonal tone concerning them. They
- 2:30:32Speaker 1: wish me luck and congratulate me for having produced another work.
- 2:30:38Speaker 1: They also declare that my writings show progress because they
- 2:30:42Speaker 1: exhale a more cheerful spirit. The thoroughly vicious people, the
- 2:30:48Speaker 1: beautiful souls, the false from top to toe, do not
- 2:30:52Speaker 1: know in the least what to do with my books. Consequently,
- 2:30:57Speaker 1: with the beautiful consistency of all beautiful souls, they regard
- 2:31:02Speaker 1: my works as beneath them the cattle among my acquaintances,
- 2:31:07Speaker 1: the mere Germans leave me to understand, if you please,
- 2:31:12Speaker 1: that they are not always of my opinion, though here
- 2:31:16Speaker 1: and there they agree with me. I have heard this
- 2:31:20Speaker 1: even said about Zarathustra. Feminism, whether in mankind or in man,
- 2:31:27Speaker 1: is likewise a barrier to my writings. With it, no
- 2:31:32Speaker 1: one could ever enter into this labyrinth of fearless knowledge.
- 2:31:38Speaker 1: To this end, a man must never have spared himself.
- 2:31:43Speaker 1: He must have been hard in his habits in order
- 2:31:46Speaker 1: to be good humored and marry among a host of
- 2:31:49Speaker 1: inexorable truths. When I try to picture the character of
- 2:31:55Speaker 1: a perfect reader, I always imagine a monster of courage
- 2:31:59Speaker 1: and curious, as well as of suppleness, cunning, and prudence.
- 2:32:05Speaker 1: In short, a born adventurer and explorer. After all, I
- 2:32:10Speaker 1: could not describe better than Zarathustra has done. Unto whom
- 2:32:15Speaker 1: I really address myself, unto whom alone would he reveal
- 2:32:20Speaker 1: his riddle, unto you, daring explorers and experimenters, and unto
- 2:32:27Speaker 1: all who have ever embarked beneath cunning sails upon terrible seas,
- 2:32:33Speaker 1: unto you who revel in riddles and in twilight, whose
- 2:32:38Speaker 1: souls are lured by flutes into every treacherous abyss. For
- 2:32:44Speaker 1: ye cannot to grope your way along a thread with
- 2:32:47Speaker 1: craven fingers, and where you are able to guess there
- 2:32:52Speaker 1: you hate to argue.
- 2:32:57Speaker 2: Four.
- 2:32:59Speaker 1: I will now pass just one or two general remarks
- 2:33:03Speaker 1: about my art of style. To communicate a state and
- 2:33:09Speaker 1: inattention of pathos by means of signs, including the tempo
- 2:33:14Speaker 1: of these signs. That is the meaning of every style,
- 2:33:19Speaker 1: And in view of the fact that the multiplicity of
- 2:33:22Speaker 1: inner states in me is enormous, I am capable of
- 2:33:28Speaker 1: many kinds of style. In short, the most multifarious art
- 2:33:33Speaker 1: of style that any man has ever had at his disposal.
- 2:33:38Speaker 1: Any style is good which genuinely communicates an inner condition,
- 2:33:45Speaker 1: which does not blunder over the signs, over the tempo
- 2:33:48Speaker 1: of the signs, or over moods. All the laws of
- 2:33:53Speaker 1: phrasing are the outcome of representing moods artistically. Good style
- 2:34:00Speaker 1: in itself is a piece of sheer foolery, mere idealism,
- 2:34:05Speaker 1: like beauty in itself, for instance, or goodness in itself,
- 2:34:11Speaker 1: or the thing in itself. All this takes for granted,
- 2:34:16Speaker 1: of course, that there exists ears that can hear, and
- 2:34:21Speaker 1: such men as are capable and worthy of a like pathos,
- 2:34:26Speaker 1: that those are not wanting unto whom one may communicate oneself. Meanwhile,
- 2:34:33Speaker 1: my Zarathustra, for instance, is still in quest of such people,
- 2:34:39Speaker 1: alas he will have to seek a long while. Yet
- 2:34:43Speaker 1: a man must be worthy of listening to him. And
- 2:34:47Speaker 1: until that time there will be no one who will
- 2:34:51Speaker 1: understand the art that has been squandered in this book.
- 2:34:56Speaker 1: No one has ever existed, who has had more novel,
- 2:35:02Speaker 1: more strange and purposely created art forms to fling to
- 2:35:07Speaker 1: the winds. The fact that such things were possible in
- 2:35:12Speaker 1: the German language still awaited proof. Formerly, I myself would
- 2:35:18Speaker 1: have denied most emphatically that it was possible. Before my
- 2:35:24Speaker 1: time people did not know what could be done with
- 2:35:27Speaker 1: the German language, what could be done with language in general.
- 2:35:33Speaker 1: The art of grand rhythm, of grand style in periods,
- 2:35:37Speaker 1: for expressing the tremendous fluctuations of the sublime and superhuman passion,
- 2:35:43Speaker 1: was first discovered by me with the diathram entitled the
- 2:35:49Speaker 1: Seven Seals which constitute the last discourse of the third
- 2:35:54Speaker 1: part of Zarathustra. I sowed miles above all that which
- 2:36:00Speaker 1: which heretofore has been called poetry.
- 2:36:06Speaker 2: Five.
- 2:36:08Speaker 1: The fact that the voice which speaks in my works
- 2:36:12Speaker 1: is that of a psychologist who has not his peer,
- 2:36:16Speaker 1: is perhaps the first conclusion at which a good reader
- 2:36:20Speaker 1: will arrive, a reader such as I deserve, and one
- 2:36:25Speaker 1: who reads me is just as the old philologists used
- 2:36:29Speaker 1: to read their horrace. Those propositions about which all the
- 2:36:35Speaker 1: world is fundamentally agreed, not to speak of fashional philosophy
- 2:36:40Speaker 1: of moralists and other empty headed and cabbage brained peoples
- 2:36:46Speaker 1: are to me but ingenuous blunders. For instance, the belief
- 2:36:52Speaker 1: that altruistic and egotistic are opposites, while all the time
- 2:36:58Speaker 1: the ego itself is merely a supreme swindle, an ideal.
- 2:37:06Speaker 1: There are no such things as egotistical or altruistic actions.
- 2:37:11Speaker 1: Both concepts are psychological nonsense. Of the proposition that man
- 2:37:18Speaker 1: pursues happiness, or the proposition that happiness is the reward
- 2:37:23Speaker 1: of virtue, or the proposition that pleasure and pain are
- 2:37:27Speaker 1: opposites morality. The soursay of mankind has falsified everything psychological,
- 2:37:36Speaker 1: root and branch. It has bemralized everything, even to the
- 2:37:42Speaker 1: terribly nonsensical point of calling love unselfish. A man must
- 2:37:48Speaker 1: first be firmly poised. He must stand securely on his
- 2:37:53Speaker 1: two legs, otherwise he cannot love at all. This. Indeed,
- 2:37:59Speaker 1: the girls know only too well. They don't care two
- 2:38:03Speaker 1: pins about unselfish and merely objective men. May I venture
- 2:38:08Speaker 1: to suggest, incidentally, that I know women. This knowledge is
- 2:38:14Speaker 1: part of my Deonnesian patrimony. Who knows? Maybe I am
- 2:38:19Speaker 1: the first psychologist of the eternally feminine women all like me.
- 2:38:25Speaker 1: But that's an old story, save, of course, the abortions
- 2:38:30Speaker 1: among them, the emancipated ones, those who lack the wherewithal
- 2:38:35Speaker 1: to have children. Thank goodness, I am not willing to
- 2:38:40Speaker 1: let myself be torn to pieces. The perfect woman tears
- 2:38:44Speaker 1: you to pieces when she loves you. I know these
- 2:38:48Speaker 1: amiable manads. Oh what a dangerous, creeping, subterranean little beast
- 2:38:54Speaker 1: of prey she is, and so agreeable with all. A
- 2:39:00Speaker 1: little woman pursuing her vengeance would force open even the
- 2:39:04Speaker 1: iron gates of fate itself. Woman is incalculably more wicked
- 2:39:10Speaker 1: than man. She is also cleverer. Goodness in a woman
- 2:39:16Speaker 1: is already a sign of g generation. All cases of
- 2:39:21Speaker 1: beautiful souls in women may be traced to the faulty
- 2:39:25Speaker 1: physiological condition. But I go no further lest I should
- 2:39:30Speaker 1: become medicinical. The struggle for equal rights is even a
- 2:39:37Speaker 1: symptom of disease. Every doctor knows this. The more womanly
- 2:39:43Speaker 1: a woman is, the more she fights tooth and nail
- 2:39:46Speaker 1: against rights. In general, the natural order of things, the
- 2:39:51Speaker 1: eternal war between the sexes, assigns to her by far
- 2:39:56Speaker 1: the foremost rank have people had ears to hear my
- 2:40:01Speaker 1: definition of love. It is the only definition worthy of
- 2:40:06Speaker 1: a philosopher. Love in this means is war in its foundation,
- 2:40:13Speaker 1: it is the mortal hatred of the sexes. Have you
- 2:40:17Speaker 1: heard my reply to the question how a woman can
- 2:40:21Speaker 1: be cured? Saved? In fact, give her a child? A
- 2:40:26Speaker 1: woman needs children. Man is always only a means, thus
- 2:40:31Speaker 1: spake Zarathustra, the emancipation of women. This is the instinctive
- 2:40:38Speaker 1: hatred of psychologically botched, that is to say, barren women.
- 2:40:43Speaker 1: For those of their sisters who are well constituted, the
- 2:40:49Speaker 1: fight against man is always only a means, a pretext,
- 2:40:54Speaker 1: a piece of strategy. By trying to rise to women,
- 2:40:59Speaker 1: per se, to higher women, to the ideal woman, all
- 2:41:05Speaker 1: they wish to do is to lower the general level
- 2:41:09Speaker 1: of women's rank. And there are no more certain means
- 2:41:14Speaker 1: to this end than university education, trousers, and the rights
- 2:41:19Speaker 1: of voting cattle. Truth to tell, the emancipated are the
- 2:41:24Speaker 1: anarchists in the eternally feminine world. These psychological mishaps the
- 2:41:30Speaker 1: most deep rooted instinct of whom is revenge, the whole
- 2:41:35Speaker 1: species of the most malicious idealism, which, by the bye
- 2:41:42Speaker 1: also manifests itself in men. In Heinrich Ibsen, for instance,
- 2:41:47Speaker 1: that typical old maid, whose object is to poison the
- 2:41:52Speaker 1: clean conscience, the natural spirit of sexual love. And in
- 2:41:57Speaker 1: order to leave no doubt in your in regard to
- 2:42:01Speaker 1: my opinion, which on this matter is as honest as
- 2:42:06Speaker 1: it is severe, I will reveal to you one more
- 2:42:10Speaker 1: clause out of my moral Code against vice. With the
- 2:42:14Speaker 1: word vice, I combat every kind of opposition to nature, or,
- 2:42:20Speaker 1: if you prefer fine words, idealism. The clause reads, preaching
- 2:42:27Speaker 1: of chastity is a public incitement to unnatural practices. All
- 2:42:33Speaker 1: the appreciation of the sexual life, all the sullying of
- 2:42:38Speaker 1: it by means of the concept impure, is the essential
- 2:42:42Speaker 1: crime against life, is the essential crime against the holy
- 2:42:47Speaker 1: spirit of life.
- 2:42:51Speaker 2: Six.
- 2:42:54Speaker 1: In order to give you some idea of myself as
- 2:42:57Speaker 1: a psychologist, let me take this curious piece of psychological
- 2:43:02Speaker 1: analysis out of the book Beyond Good and Evil in
- 2:43:06Speaker 1: which it appears. I forbid by the bye any guessing
- 2:43:11Speaker 1: as to whom I am describing this passage, the genius
- 2:43:17Speaker 1: of the heart, as that great anchorte possessed it, the
- 2:43:21Speaker 1: divine tempter and born pied piper of consciences, whose voice
- 2:43:26Speaker 1: knows how to sink into the inmost depths of every soul,
- 2:43:30Speaker 1: who neither utters a word nor casts a glance in
- 2:43:35Speaker 1: which some seductive motive or trick does not lie. A
- 2:43:39Speaker 1: part of whose masterliness is that he understands the art
- 2:43:43Speaker 1: of seeming, not what he is, but that which will
- 2:43:48Speaker 1: place a fresh constraint upon his followers to press ever
- 2:43:53Speaker 1: more closely upon him, to follow him ever more enthusiastically
- 2:43:57Speaker 1: and wholeheartedly. The genius of the heart, which makes all
- 2:44:05Speaker 1: loud and self conceited things hold their tongues and lend
- 2:44:09Speaker 1: their ears, which polishes all rough souls and makes them
- 2:44:15Speaker 1: taste a new longing to lie placid, as a mirror
- 2:44:19Speaker 1: that the deep heavens may be reflected in them. The
- 2:44:26Speaker 1: genius of the heart, which teaches the clumsy and too
- 2:44:31Speaker 1: hasty hand to hesitate and grasp more tenderly, which sense
- 2:44:36Speaker 1: the hidden and forgotten treasure, the pearl of goodness and
- 2:44:41Speaker 1: sweet spirituality beneath thick black ice, and is a divining
- 2:44:47Speaker 1: rod for every grain of gold long buried and imprisoned
- 2:44:52Speaker 1: in heaps of mud and sand. The genius of the heart,
- 2:45:00Speaker 1: from contact with which every man goes away, richer, not
- 2:45:05Speaker 1: blessed and overcome, not as though favored and crushed by
- 2:45:10Speaker 1: the good things of others, but richer in himself, fresher
- 2:45:15Speaker 1: to himself than before, opened up, breathed upon and sounded
- 2:45:21Speaker 1: by a thawing wind, more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more fragile,
- 2:45:30Speaker 1: more bruised, but full of hopes, which has yet lacked names,
- 2:45:36Speaker 1: full of a new will and striving, full of a
- 2:45:39Speaker 1: new unwillingness, and counter striving the birth of tragedy one.
- 2:45:50Speaker 1: In order to be fair to the Birth of Tragedy
- 2:45:53Speaker 1: eighteen seventy two, it is necessary to forget a few things.
- 2:45:59Speaker 1: It created sensation, and even fascinated by means of its mistakes,
- 2:46:06Speaker 1: by means of its application to Wagnerism, as if the
- 2:46:10Speaker 1: latter were the sign of an ascending tendency. On that
- 2:46:15Speaker 1: account alone, this treatise was an event in Wagner's life. Thenceforward,
- 2:46:21Speaker 1: great hopes surrounded the name of Wagner. Even to this day.
- 2:46:25Speaker 1: People remind me sometimes in the middle of parserval, that
- 2:46:30Speaker 1: it rests on my conscience. If the opinion that this
- 2:46:34Speaker 1: movement is of great value to culture at length became prevalent.
- 2:46:40Speaker 1: I have often seen the book quoted as the second
- 2:46:44Speaker 1: birth of tragedy. From the spirit of music. People had
- 2:46:49Speaker 1: ears only for new formulae for Wagner's art, his object
- 2:46:54Speaker 1: and his mission, and in this way the real hidden
- 2:46:59Speaker 1: value of the book was overlooked. Hellenism and pessimism. This
- 2:47:06Speaker 1: would have been a less equivocal title, seeing that the
- 2:47:11Speaker 1: book contained the first attempt at showing how the Greeks
- 2:47:15Speaker 1: succeeded in disposing of pessimism in what manner they overcame it.
- 2:47:22Speaker 1: Tragedy itself is the proof of the fact that the
- 2:47:26Speaker 1: Greeks were not pessimists. Schopenhauer blundered here, as he blundered
- 2:47:31Speaker 1: in everything else. Regarded impartially, The Birth of Tragedy is
- 2:47:38Speaker 1: a book quite strange to its age. No one would
- 2:47:42Speaker 1: dream that it was begun in the thunder of the
- 2:47:46Speaker 1: Battle of Verd. I thought out these problems on cold
- 2:47:51Speaker 1: September nights, beneath the walls of mess in the midst
- 2:47:56Speaker 1: of my duties as a nurse to the wounded. It
- 2:48:00Speaker 1: would be easier to think that it was written fifty
- 2:48:03Speaker 1: years earlier. Its attitude towards politics is one of indifference,
- 2:48:10Speaker 1: un German, as people would say today. Translator's note. Those
- 2:48:16Speaker 1: Germans who like Nietzsche or Gerte recognize that politics constitute
- 2:48:22Speaker 1: a danger to culture, and who appreciate the literature of
- 2:48:26Speaker 1: maturer cultures such as that of France are called un
- 2:48:30Speaker 1: Deutsche un German by imperialistic Germans. And translator's note. It
- 2:48:38Speaker 1: smells offensively of Hegel. Only in one or two formulae
- 2:48:44Speaker 1: is it infected with a bitter odour of corpses, which
- 2:48:47Speaker 1: is peculiar to schopenhauer An idea. The antagonism of the
- 2:48:53Speaker 1: two concepts Deunesian and Apollonian is translated into metaphysics. History
- 2:49:01Speaker 1: itself is depicted as the development of this idea. In tragedy,
- 2:49:08Speaker 1: this antithesis has become unity. From this standpoint, things which
- 2:49:15Speaker 1: thereto before have never been face to face are suddenly
- 2:49:19Speaker 1: confronted and understood and illuminated by each other Opera and revolution,
- 2:49:25Speaker 1: for instance. The two decisive innovations in the book are first,
- 2:49:31Speaker 1: the comprehension of the Denesian phenomenon among the Greeks. It
- 2:49:36Speaker 1: provides the first psychological analysis of this phenomenon and sees
- 2:49:42Speaker 1: in it the single root of all Greek art, and secondly,
- 2:49:47Speaker 1: the comprehension of Socraticism. Socrates being presented for the first
- 2:49:53Speaker 1: time as the instrument of Greek dissolution, as a typical
- 2:49:59Speaker 1: decadent reason versus instinct reason at any cost, as a
- 2:50:06Speaker 1: dangerous life undermining force. The whole book is profoundly and
- 2:50:12Speaker 1: politely silent concerning Christianity. The latter is neither Apollonian nor Denesian.
- 2:50:20Speaker 1: It denies all aesthetic value, which are the only values
- 2:50:24Speaker 1: that The Birth of Tragedy recognizes. Christianity is most profoundly nihilistic,
- 2:50:32Speaker 1: whereas in the Dionnesian symbol, the most extreme limits of
- 2:50:36Speaker 1: a yay saying attitude to life are attained. In one
- 2:50:41Speaker 1: part of the book, the Christian priesthood is referred to
- 2:50:46Speaker 1: as the perfidious order of goblins as subterraneans.
- 2:50:54Speaker 2: Two.
- 2:50:56Speaker 1: This start of mind was remarkable beyond measure. As confirmation
- 2:51:02Speaker 1: of my inmost personal experience, I had discovered the only
- 2:51:07Speaker 1: example of this fact that history possesses. With this, I
- 2:51:13Speaker 1: was the first to understand the amazing Dionesian phenomenon. At
- 2:51:18Speaker 1: the same time, by recognizing Socrates as a decadent, I
- 2:51:23Speaker 1: proved most conclusively that a certainty of my psychological grasp
- 2:51:28Speaker 1: of things ran very little risk at the hands of
- 2:51:32Speaker 1: any sort of moral idiosyncrasy. To regard morality itself as
- 2:51:39Speaker 1: a symptom of degeneration is an innovation, a unique event
- 2:51:44Speaker 1: of the first order in the history of knowledge. How
- 2:51:49Speaker 1: high I had soared above the pitifully foolish gabble about
- 2:51:54Speaker 1: optimism and pessimism with my two new doctrines, I was
- 2:52:00Speaker 1: the first to see the actual contrast the degenerate instinct,
- 2:52:05Speaker 1: which turns upon life with the subterranean lust of vengeance. Christianity,
- 2:52:11Speaker 1: Schopenhauer's philosophy, and in some respects to even Plato's philosophy.
- 2:52:17Speaker 1: In short, the whole of idealism in its typical forms,
- 2:52:23Speaker 1: as opposed to a formula of the highest yay saying
- 2:52:26Speaker 1: to life born of an abundance and a superabundance of life,
- 2:52:32Speaker 1: a ya saying free from all reserve, applying even to
- 2:52:37Speaker 1: suffering and guilt and all that is questionable and strange
- 2:52:43Speaker 1: in existence. This last, most joyous, most exuberant, and exultant
- 2:52:50Speaker 1: yay to life is not only the highest but also
- 2:52:55Speaker 1: the profoundest conception, and one which is most strictly confirmed
- 2:53:01Speaker 1: and supported by truth and science. Nothing that exists must
- 2:53:07Speaker 1: be suppressed. Nothing can be dispensed with. Those aspects of
- 2:53:12Speaker 1: life which Christians and other nihilists reject belong to an
- 2:53:17Speaker 1: incalculably higher order in the hierarchy of values than that
- 2:53:23Speaker 1: which the instinct of degeneration calls good and may call good.
- 2:53:30Speaker 1: In order to understand this, a certain courage is necessary,
- 2:53:35Speaker 1: and as a prequisite of this, a certain super fluidity
- 2:53:40Speaker 1: of strength. For a man can approach only as near
- 2:53:45Speaker 1: to truth as he has the courage to advance. That
- 2:53:49Speaker 1: is to say, everything depends strictly upon the measure of
- 2:53:53Speaker 1: his strength. Knowledge and the affirmation of reality are just
- 2:53:59Speaker 1: as necessary to the strong man as cowardice the flight
- 2:54:03Speaker 1: from reality, in fact, the ideal, are necessary to the weak.
- 2:54:08Speaker 1: Inspired by weakness. These people are not at liberty to
- 2:54:14Speaker 1: know decadence, stand in need of lies. It is one
- 2:54:19Speaker 1: of their self preservative measures. He who not only understands
- 2:54:25Speaker 1: the word Dinesian, but understands himself in that term, does
- 2:54:31Speaker 1: not require any refutation of Plato, or of Christianity, or
- 2:54:36Speaker 1: of Schopenhauer. For his nose sense decomposition three, the extent
- 2:54:48Speaker 1: to which I had by means of these doctrines discovered
- 2:54:52Speaker 1: the idea of tragedy. The ultimate explanation of what the
- 2:54:58Speaker 1: psychology of tragedy is I discussed finally in the Twilight
- 2:55:04Speaker 1: of the Idol's Aphorism five Part ten, the saying of
- 2:55:10Speaker 1: yay to life and even to its weirdest and most
- 2:55:14Speaker 1: difficult problems. The will to life, rejoicing at its own
- 2:55:19Speaker 1: infinite vitality in the sacrifice of its highest types. That
- 2:55:25Speaker 1: is what I call Dionesian. That is what I meant
- 2:55:29Speaker 1: as the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poet.
- 2:55:33Speaker 1: Not to cast out terror and pity, or to purge
- 2:55:37Speaker 1: one's self of dangerous passions by discharging it with vehemence.
- 2:55:43Speaker 1: This was Aristotle's misunderstanding of it. Translator's note, Aristotle's Poetics,
- 2:55:52Speaker 1: Chapter six end translator's note. But to be far beyond
- 2:55:57Speaker 1: terror and pity, and to be the eternal list of
- 2:56:00Speaker 1: becoming itself that lust which also involves the joy of destruction.
- 2:56:08Speaker 1: In this sense, I have the right to regard myself
- 2:56:12Speaker 1: as the first tragic philosopher, that is to say, the
- 2:56:17Speaker 1: most extreme antithesis and antipods of a pessimistic philosopher before
- 2:56:23Speaker 1: my time. No such thing existed, as this translation of
- 2:56:28Speaker 1: the Denesian phenomenon into philosophic emotion, tragic wisdom was lacking
- 2:56:36Speaker 1: in vain. Have I sought for signs of it, even
- 2:56:38Speaker 1: among the great Greeks in philosophy, those belonging to the
- 2:56:43Speaker 1: two centuries before Socrates. I still remained little doubtful about Heraclitis,
- 2:56:50Speaker 1: in whose presence alone I felt warmer and more at
- 2:56:53Speaker 1: ease than anywhere else. The Ya saying to the impermanence
- 2:56:58Speaker 1: and annihilation of things, which is the decisive feature of
- 2:57:02Speaker 1: Dionesian philosophy, the Ya saying to contradiction and war the
- 2:57:09Speaker 1: postulation of becoming, together with a radical rejection even of
- 2:57:13Speaker 1: the concept being in all these things. At all events,
- 2:57:19Speaker 1: I must recognize him who has come nearest to me
- 2:57:22Speaker 1: in thought. Hitherto the doctrine of the eternal recurrence, that
- 2:57:28Speaker 1: is to say, of the absolute and eternal repetition of
- 2:57:32Speaker 1: all things in periodical cycles. This doctrine of Zarathustras, might,
- 2:57:38Speaker 1: it is true, have been taught before. In any case,
- 2:57:43Speaker 1: the Stoics, who derive nearly all the fundamental ideas from Heracitis,
- 2:57:48Speaker 1: show traces of it.
- 2:57:53Speaker 2: Four.
- 2:57:54Speaker 1: A tremendous hope finds expression in this work. After all,
- 2:57:59Speaker 1: I have absolutely no reason to renounce the hope for
- 2:58:04Speaker 1: a deneasy in future of music. Let us look a
- 2:58:07Speaker 1: century ahead, and let us suppose that my attempt to
- 2:58:11Speaker 1: destroy two millenniums of hostility to nature and of the
- 2:58:15Speaker 1: violation of humanity be crowned with success. That new party
- 2:58:21Speaker 1: of life advocates, which will undertake the greatest of all tasks,
- 2:58:26Speaker 1: the elevation and perfection of mankind, as well as the
- 2:58:30Speaker 1: relentless destruction of all degenerate and parasitical elements, will make
- 2:58:36Speaker 1: that superabundance of life on earth once more possible, out
- 2:58:41Speaker 1: of which the Denesian state will perforce arise again. I
- 2:58:47Speaker 1: promise the advent of a tragic age the highest art
- 2:58:51Speaker 1: in the saying of yea to life. Tragedy will be
- 2:58:55Speaker 1: born again when mankind has the knowledge of the hardest
- 2:59:00Speaker 1: but most necessary of wars behind it, without, however, suffering
- 2:59:06Speaker 1: from that knowledge. A psychologist might add that what I
- 2:59:11Speaker 1: heard in Wagnerian music in my youth and early manhood
- 2:59:16Speaker 1: have nothing whatsoever to do with Wagner. That when I
- 2:59:20Speaker 1: described deneasy in music, I described merely what I personally
- 2:59:25Speaker 1: had heard that I was compelled instinctively to translate and
- 2:59:31Speaker 1: transfigure everything into the new spirit which filled my breast.
- 2:59:36Speaker 1: A proof of this, and as strong a proof as
- 2:59:39Speaker 1: you could have, is my essay Wagner in by Right,
- 2:59:44Speaker 1: in all its decisive psychological passages, I am the only
- 2:59:48Speaker 1: person concerned. Without any hesitation. You may read my name
- 2:59:54Speaker 1: or the word Zarathustra wherever the text contains the name
- 2:59:59Speaker 1: of Wagner. The whole panorama of the Diathrambic artist is
- 3:00:05Speaker 1: the representation of the already existing author of Zarathustra, and
- 3:00:10Speaker 1: it is drawn with an abysmal depth which does not
- 3:00:14Speaker 1: even once come into contact with the real Wagner. Wagner
- 3:00:20Speaker 1: himself had a notion of this truth, he did not
- 3:00:24Speaker 1: recognize himself in the essay. In this way, the idea
- 3:00:29Speaker 1: of by right was changed into something which to those
- 3:00:33Speaker 1: who are acquainted with my Zarathustra will be no riddle.
- 3:00:39Speaker 1: That is to say, into the great noon, when the
- 3:00:44Speaker 1: highest of the elect will consecrate themselves for the greatest
- 3:00:48Speaker 1: of all duties. Who knows the vision of a feast
- 3:00:53Speaker 1: which I may live to see. The pathos at the
- 3:00:58Speaker 1: first few pages is universal.
- 3:01:01Speaker 2: History the look.
- 3:01:03Speaker 1: The look which is discussed on page one oh five
- 3:01:06Speaker 1: of the book is the actual look of Zarathustra. Translator's
- 3:01:12Speaker 1: footnote this number and those which follow refers to the
- 3:01:18Speaker 1: thoughts out of Season Part one in this edition of
- 3:01:22Speaker 1: Nietzsche's works and translator's note Wagner bayright. The whole of
- 3:01:30Speaker 1: this petty German wretchedness is a cloud upon which an
- 3:01:35Speaker 1: infinite fata morgana of the future is reflected. Even from
- 3:01:40Speaker 1: the psychological standpoint, all the decisive traits in my character
- 3:01:45Speaker 1: are introduced into Wagner's nature, the juxtaposition of the most
- 3:01:51Speaker 1: brilliant and most fatal forces. A will to power such
- 3:01:57Speaker 1: as no man has ever possessed, inexorable bravery in matters spiritual,
- 3:02:04Speaker 1: an unlimited power of learning, unaccompanied by depressed powers for action.
- 3:02:11Speaker 1: Everything in this essay is a prophecy, the proximity of
- 3:02:16Speaker 1: the resurrection of the Greek spirit, the need of men
- 3:02:21Speaker 1: who will be counter Alexander's, who will once more tie
- 3:02:25Speaker 1: the Gaudian knot of Greek culture after it has been cut.
- 3:02:32Speaker 1: Listen to the world historic accent, with which the concept
- 3:02:36Speaker 1: sense for the tragic is introduced on page one O eight.
- 3:02:42Speaker 1: There are little else but world historic accents in this essay.
- 3:02:48Speaker 1: This is the strangest kind of objectivity that ever existed.
- 3:02:53Speaker 1: By absolute certainty in regard to what I am projected
- 3:02:58Speaker 1: itself into any chance reality truth about myself was voiced
- 3:03:04Speaker 1: from out appalling depths on pages one seven four and
- 3:03:09Speaker 1: one seven five. The style of Zarathustra is described and
- 3:03:13Speaker 1: foretold with incisive certainty, and no more magnificent expression will
- 3:03:19Speaker 1: ever be found than that on pages one four four
- 3:03:23Speaker 1: to one four seven for the event for which Zarathustra stands,
- 3:03:28Speaker 1: that prodigious act of the purification and consecration of mankind.
- 3:03:37Speaker 1: Thoughts out of Season one. The four essays composing the
- 3:03:43Speaker 1: thoughts out of Season are thoroughly warlike in tone. They
- 3:03:48Speaker 1: prove that I was no mere dreamer, that I delight
- 3:03:53Speaker 1: in drawing the sword, and perhaps also that my wrist
- 3:03:59Speaker 1: is dangerous supple. The first Onslaught eighteen seventy three was
- 3:04:06Speaker 1: directed against German culture, upon which I looked down even
- 3:04:11Speaker 1: at that time, with unmitigated contempt. Without either sense, substance,
- 3:04:18Speaker 1: or goal, it was simply public opinion. There could be
- 3:04:23Speaker 1: no more dangerous misunderstanding than to suppose that Germany's success
- 3:04:28Speaker 1: at arms proved anything in favor of German culture, and
- 3:04:33Speaker 1: still less the triumph of this culture over that of France.
- 3:04:39Speaker 1: The second essay eighteen seventy four brings to light that
- 3:04:44Speaker 1: which is dangerous, that which corrodes and poisonous life in
- 3:04:49Speaker 1: our manner of pursuing scientific study. Life is diseased thanks
- 3:04:55Speaker 1: to this dehumanized piece of clockwork and mechanism, thanks to
- 3:05:00Speaker 1: the impersonality of the workmen and the false economy of
- 3:05:05Speaker 1: the division of labour, The object, which is culture is lost.
- 3:05:11Speaker 1: Sight of modern scientific activity. As a means, Thereto simply
- 3:05:17Speaker 1: produces barbarism. In this treatise, the historical sense of which
- 3:05:24Speaker 1: this century is so proud is for the first time
- 3:05:28Speaker 1: recognized as sickness, as a typical symptom of decay. In
- 3:05:34Speaker 1: the third and fourth essays, a signpost is set up
- 3:05:38Speaker 1: pointing to a higher concept of culture, to a re
- 3:05:42Speaker 1: establishment of the notion culture, and two pictures of the
- 3:05:47Speaker 1: hardest self love and self discipline are presented, two essentially
- 3:05:53Speaker 1: unmodern types full of the most sovereign contempt for all
- 3:05:58Speaker 1: that which lay around them, and was called empire culture,
- 3:06:03Speaker 1: Christianity Bismarck and success. These two types were Schopenhauer and Wagner,
- 3:06:13Speaker 1: or in a word, Nietzsche. Two of these four attacks,
- 3:06:23Speaker 1: the first met with extraordinary success. The stir which it
- 3:06:27Speaker 1: created was in every way gorgeous. I had put my
- 3:06:32Speaker 1: finger on the vulnerable spot of a triumphant nation. I
- 3:06:37Speaker 1: have told it that its victory was not a red
- 3:06:41Speaker 1: letter day for culture, but perhaps something very different. The
- 3:06:46Speaker 1: reply rang out from all sides, and certainly not from
- 3:06:50Speaker 1: old friends of David Strauss, whom I had made ridiculous
- 3:06:54Speaker 1: as the type of the German philistine of culture and
- 3:06:58Speaker 1: a man of smugs self content, in short, as the
- 3:07:02Speaker 1: author of that subterranean gospel of his called the Old
- 3:07:07Speaker 1: and the New Faith. The term philistine of culture passed
- 3:07:12Speaker 1: into the current language of Germany after the appearance of
- 3:07:16Speaker 1: my book. These old friends, whose vanity as Wertembergians and
- 3:07:23Speaker 1: Swabians I had deeply wounded in regarding their unique animal,
- 3:07:28Speaker 1: their bird of paradise as a trifle comic, replied to
- 3:07:33Speaker 1: me as ingenuously and as grossly as I could have wished.
- 3:07:38Speaker 1: The Prussian replies were smarter. They contained more Prussian blue.
- 3:07:44Speaker 1: The most disreputable attitude was assumed by a Leibsig paper,
- 3:07:50Speaker 1: the egregarious Gretzborden, and it cost me some pains to
- 3:07:55Speaker 1: prevent my indignant friends at Boola from taking action against it.
- 3:08:00Speaker 1: Only a few gentlemen decided in my favor, and for
- 3:08:04Speaker 1: very diverse and sometimes unaccountable reasons. Among them was one
- 3:08:10Speaker 1: Edouald of Guertingen, who made it clear that my attacks
- 3:08:15Speaker 1: on Strauss had been deadly. There was also the Heglian
- 3:08:20Speaker 1: Bruno Bauer, who from that time became one of my
- 3:08:25Speaker 1: most attentive readers. In his later years he liked to
- 3:08:29Speaker 1: refer to me when, for instance, he wanted to give
- 3:08:33Speaker 1: her von Treyske, the Prussian historographer, a hint as to
- 3:08:38Speaker 1: where he could obtain information about the notion culture of
- 3:08:43Speaker 1: which he her von Te had completely lost sight. The waitiest
- 3:08:50Speaker 1: and longest notice of my book and its author appeared
- 3:08:54Speaker 1: in Wurtzburg, and was written by Professor Hoffmann, an old
- 3:08:58Speaker 1: pupil of the philosopher. For von Barda, the essays made
- 3:09:04Speaker 1: him foresee a great future for me, namely that of
- 3:09:08Speaker 1: bringing about a sort of crisis and decisive turning point
- 3:09:12Speaker 1: in the problem of atheism, of which he recognized in
- 3:09:15Speaker 1: me the most instinctive and most radical advocate. It was
- 3:09:20Speaker 1: atheism that had drawn me to Schopenhauer. The review, which
- 3:09:25Speaker 1: received by far the most attention and which excited the
- 3:09:28Speaker 1: most bitterness, was an extraordinarily powerful and plucky appreciation of
- 3:09:33Speaker 1: my work by Karl Hillebrand, a man who was usually
- 3:09:38Speaker 1: so mild and the last humane German who knew how
- 3:09:43Speaker 1: to wield a pen. The article appeared in the Augsburg
- 3:09:47Speaker 1: Gazette and can be read to day, couched in rather
- 3:09:51Speaker 1: more cautious language among his collective essays. In it, my
- 3:09:56Speaker 1: work is referred to as an event, as a decisive point,
- 3:10:01Speaker 1: as the first sign of an awakening, as an excellent symptom,
- 3:10:06Speaker 1: as an actual revival of German earnestness and of German
- 3:10:11Speaker 1: passion in things spiritual. Hillebrand could speak only in the
- 3:10:17Speaker 1: terms of the highest respect of the form of my book,
- 3:10:21Speaker 1: of its consumer taste, of its perfect tact in discriminating
- 3:10:25Speaker 1: between persons and causes. He characterized it as the best
- 3:10:30Speaker 1: polemical work in the German language, the best performance in
- 3:10:34Speaker 1: the art of polemics for which Germans is so dangerous
- 3:10:39Speaker 1: and so strongly to be depreciated. Besides confirming my standpoint,
- 3:10:46Speaker 1: he laid even greater stress upon what I had dared
- 3:10:49Speaker 1: to say about the deterioration of language in Germany. Nowadays
- 3:10:55Speaker 1: writers assumed the airs of purists and can no longer
- 3:10:59Speaker 1: even construct sentence translator's footnote. The purists constitute a definite
- 3:11:06Speaker 1: body in Germany, which is called the Deutscher sprate Wearin.
- 3:11:12Speaker 1: Their object is to banish every foreign word from the language,
- 3:11:16Speaker 1: and they carry this process of ostracism even into the
- 3:11:20Speaker 1: domain of the menu, where their efforts at rendering the
- 3:11:23Speaker 1: meaning of French dishes are extremely comical. Strange to say,
- 3:11:28Speaker 1: their principal organ and their other publications are by no
- 3:11:32Speaker 1: means free either from solecisms or faults of style. And
- 3:11:37Speaker 1: it is doubtless to this curious anomaly that Nietzsche here
- 3:11:41Speaker 1: refers and translator's footnote, sharing my contempt for the literary
- 3:11:48Speaker 1: stars of this nation, He concluded by expressing his admiration
- 3:11:53Speaker 1: for my courage, that greatest courage of all, which places
- 3:11:58Speaker 1: the very favorites of the people in the dark. The
- 3:12:03Speaker 1: after effects of this essay of mine proved invaluable to
- 3:12:07Speaker 1: me in my life. No one has ever tried to
- 3:12:10Speaker 1: meddle with me. Since people are silent in Germany, I
- 3:12:15Speaker 1: am treated with gloomy caution. For years I have rejoiced
- 3:12:19Speaker 1: in the privilege of such absolute freedom of speech, as
- 3:12:23Speaker 1: no one nowadays, least of all in the Empire, has
- 3:12:27Speaker 1: enough liberty to claim. My paradise is in the shadow
- 3:12:31Speaker 1: of my sword. At bottom, all I had done was
- 3:12:35Speaker 1: to put one of Senhaal's maxims into practice. He advises
- 3:12:40Speaker 1: one to make one's entrance into society by means of
- 3:12:43Speaker 1: a jewel. And how well I had chosen my opponent,
- 3:12:48Speaker 1: the foremost freethinker of Germany. As a matter of fact,
- 3:12:53Speaker 1: quite a novel kind of free thought found its expression
- 3:12:56Speaker 1: in this way. After the present, nothing has been more
- 3:13:00Speaker 1: strange and more foreign to my blood than the whole
- 3:13:03Speaker 1: of that European and American species known as libre panceur,
- 3:13:09Speaker 1: incorrigible blockheads and clowns of modern ideas that they are.
- 3:13:15Speaker 1: I feel much more profoundly at variance with them than
- 3:13:19Speaker 1: with any one of their adversaries. They also wish to
- 3:13:23Speaker 1: improve mankind after their own fashion, that is to say,
- 3:13:29Speaker 1: in their own image, against that which I stand for
- 3:13:33Speaker 1: and desire. They would wage an implacable war if only
- 3:13:38Speaker 1: they understood it. The whole gang of them still believe
- 3:13:41Speaker 1: in an ideal. I am the first immoralist. Three. I
- 3:13:50Speaker 1: should not like to say that the last two essays
- 3:13:53Speaker 1: in the Thoughts out of Season, associated with the names
- 3:13:57Speaker 1: of Schopenhauer and Wagner respectively, serve any special purpose in
- 3:14:02Speaker 1: throwing light upon these two cases or in formulating their
- 3:14:06Speaker 1: psychological problems. This, of course does not apply to a
- 3:14:11Speaker 1: few details. Thus, for instance, in the second of the
- 3:14:16Speaker 1: two essays, with a profound certainty of instinct, I already
- 3:14:21Speaker 1: characterized the elementary factor in Wagner's nature as a theatrical
- 3:14:26Speaker 1: talent which, in all his means and inspirations, only draws
- 3:14:31Speaker 1: its final conclusions. At bottom, my desire in this essay
- 3:14:36Speaker 1: was to do something very different from writing psychology. An
- 3:14:41Speaker 1: unprecedented educational problem, a new understanding of self discipline and
- 3:14:47Speaker 1: self defense carried to the point of hardness, a road
- 3:14:51Speaker 1: to greatness and to world historic duties yearned to find expression,
- 3:14:58Speaker 1: roughly speaking, seized too famous and theretofore completely undefined types
- 3:15:05Speaker 1: by the forelock after the manner in which one seizes
- 3:15:09Speaker 1: opportunities simply in order to speak my mind on certain questions,
- 3:15:15Speaker 1: in order to have a few more formulas, signs, and
- 3:15:19Speaker 1: means of expression at my disposal. Indeed, I actually suggest
- 3:15:25Speaker 1: this with a most unearthly sagacity. On page one eight
- 3:15:30Speaker 1: three of Schopenhauer as Educator, Plato made use of Socrates
- 3:15:36Speaker 1: in the same way, that is to say, as a
- 3:15:40Speaker 1: cipher for Plato. Now that from some distance I can
- 3:15:45Speaker 1: look back upon the conditions of which these essays are
- 3:15:49Speaker 1: the testimony, I would be loath to deny that they
- 3:15:53Speaker 1: refer simply to me. The essay Wagner in by right
- 3:15:59Speaker 1: is a vision of my own future. On the other hand,
- 3:16:03Speaker 1: my most secret history, my development, is written down in
- 3:16:08Speaker 1: Schopenhauer as Educator. But above all the vow I made
- 3:16:15Speaker 1: what I am to day, the place I now hold,
- 3:16:19Speaker 1: at a height from which I speak no longer with
- 3:16:22Speaker 1: words but with thunderbolts. Oh how far I was from
- 3:16:27Speaker 1: all this in those days. But I saw the land.
- 3:16:32Speaker 1: I did not deceive myself one moment as to the way,
- 3:16:36Speaker 1: the sea, the danger, and success, the great calm in
- 3:16:41Speaker 1: promising this happy prospect of a future which must not
- 3:16:45Speaker 1: remain only a promise. In this book every word has
- 3:16:51Speaker 1: been lived profoundly and intimately the most painful things are
- 3:16:56Speaker 1: not lacking in it. It contains words where which are
- 3:17:00Speaker 1: positively running with blood, but a wind of great freedom
- 3:17:05Speaker 1: blows over the whole. Even its wounds do not constitute
- 3:17:09Speaker 1: an objection as to what I understand by being a philosopher,
- 3:17:14Speaker 1: that is to say, the terrible explosive in the presence
- 3:17:19Speaker 1: of which everything is in danger. As to how I
- 3:17:23Speaker 1: sever my idea of the philosopher by miles from that
- 3:17:27Speaker 1: other idea of him, which includes even a count, not
- 3:17:32Speaker 1: to speak of the academic ruminators and other professors of philosophy.
- 3:17:38Speaker 1: Concerning all these things, this essay provides invaluable information, even
- 3:17:43Speaker 1: granting that at bottom it is not Schopenhauer as educator
- 3:17:49Speaker 1: but Nietzsche as educator who speaks his sentiments in it.
- 3:17:55Speaker 1: Considering that in those days my trade was that of
- 3:17:59Speaker 1: a scholar, and perhaps also that I understood my trade,
- 3:18:04Speaker 1: the piece of austere scholar psychology which suddenly makes its
- 3:18:09Speaker 1: appearance in this essay is not without importance. It expresses
- 3:18:14Speaker 1: the feeling of distance and my profound certainty regarding what
- 3:18:19Speaker 1: was my real life task and what was merely means
- 3:18:25Speaker 1: intervals and accessory work. To me, my wisdom consists in
- 3:18:31Speaker 1: my having been many things and in many places, in
- 3:18:36Speaker 1: order to become one thing, in order to be able
- 3:18:39Speaker 1: to attain to one thing.
- 3:18:42Speaker 2: It was part of my.
- 3:18:44Speaker 1: Fate to be a scholar for a while. End of
- 3:18:51Speaker 1: Why I write such excellent books? Part One, Why I
- 3:18:56Speaker 1: write such excellent books? Part two Human, All Too Human?
- 3:19:04Speaker 1: One Human, All too Human, with its two sequels, is
- 3:19:10Speaker 1: a memorial of a crisis. It is called a book
- 3:19:14Speaker 1: for free spirits. Almost every sentence in it is the
- 3:19:19Speaker 1: expression of a triumph. By means of it, I purged
- 3:19:23Speaker 1: myself of everything in me which was foreign to my nature.
- 3:19:28Speaker 1: Idealism is foreign to me. The title of the book means,
- 3:19:33Speaker 1: where ye see ideal things, I see human alas all
- 3:19:39Speaker 1: too human things. I know men better. The word free
- 3:19:45Speaker 1: spirit in this book must not be understood as anything
- 3:19:49Speaker 1: else than a spirit that has become free, that has
- 3:19:53Speaker 1: once more taken possession of itself. My tone, the pitch
- 3:19:59Speaker 1: of my voice, has completely changed.
- 3:20:02Speaker 2: The book will.
- 3:20:03Speaker 1: Be thought clever, cool, and at times both hard and scornful.
- 3:20:10Speaker 1: A certain spirituality of noble tastes seems to be ever
- 3:20:14Speaker 1: struggling to dominate a passionate torrent.
- 3:20:17Speaker 2: At its feet.
- 3:20:19Speaker 1: In this respect, there is some sense in the fact
- 3:20:23Speaker 1: that it was the one hundredth anniversary of Voltaire's death
- 3:20:27Speaker 1: that served, so to speak, as an excuse for the
- 3:20:31Speaker 1: publication of the book as early as eighteen seventy eight.
- 3:20:36Speaker 1: For Voltaire, as the opposite of everyone who wrote after him,
- 3:20:42Speaker 1: was above all a grandee of the intellect, precisely what
- 3:20:46Speaker 1: I am. Also the name of Voltaire on one of
- 3:20:50Speaker 1: my writings, that was verily a step forwards in my direction.
- 3:20:57Speaker 1: Looking into this book a little more closely, you perceive
- 3:21:00Speaker 1: a pitiless spirit who knows all the secret hiding places
- 3:21:05Speaker 1: in which ideals are wont to skulk, where they find
- 3:21:09Speaker 1: their dungeons, and, as it were, their last refuge. With
- 3:21:13Speaker 1: a torch in my hand, the light of which is
- 3:21:16Speaker 1: not by any means a flickering one, I illuminate this
- 3:21:20Speaker 1: nether world with beams that cut like blades. It is war,
- 3:21:26Speaker 1: but war without powder, and smoke without warlike attitudes, without
- 3:21:32Speaker 1: pathos and contorted limbs. All these things would still be idealism.
- 3:21:38Speaker 1: One error after another is quietly laid upon ice. The
- 3:21:42Speaker 1: ideal is not refuted. It freezes here, for instance, genius
- 3:21:48Speaker 1: freezes around the corner, the Saint freezes under a thick icicle,
- 3:21:54Speaker 1: the hero freezes, and in the end faith itself freezes.
- 3:22:02Speaker 1: So called conviction and also pity are considerably cooled, and
- 3:22:07Speaker 1: almost everywhere the thing in itself is freezing to death.
- 3:22:15Speaker 2: Two.
- 3:22:17Speaker 1: This book was begun during the first musical festival at
- 3:22:20Speaker 1: by Right. A feeling of profound strangeness towards everything that
- 3:22:26Speaker 1: surrounded me there is one of its first conditions. He
- 3:22:30Speaker 1: who has any notion of the visions which even at
- 3:22:34Speaker 1: that time had flitted across my path, we'll be able
- 3:22:38Speaker 1: to guess what I felt. When one day I came
- 3:22:41Speaker 1: to my senses in by Right, It was just as
- 3:22:46Speaker 1: if I had been dreaming. Where on earth was I?
- 3:22:50Speaker 1: I recognized nothing that I saw. I scarcely recognized Wagner.
- 3:22:57Speaker 1: It was in Vain that I called up reminiscences Tribschen,
- 3:23:02Speaker 1: the remote island of Bliss, not the shadow of a
- 3:23:05Speaker 1: resemblance the incomparable days devoted to the laying of the
- 3:23:11Speaker 1: first stone. The small group of initiates who celebrated them,
- 3:23:16Speaker 1: and who were far from lacking fingers for the handling
- 3:23:19Speaker 1: of delicate things not the shadow of a resemblance. What
- 3:23:24Speaker 1: had happened. Wagner had been translated into German. The Wagnerite
- 3:23:30Speaker 1: had become master of wagner German art, the German master
- 3:23:36Speaker 1: German beer. We who know only too well the kind
- 3:23:41Speaker 1: of refined artists and cosmopolitanism in taste to which alone
- 3:23:47Speaker 1: Wagner's art can appeal, were besides ourselves at the sight
- 3:23:51Speaker 1: of Wagner bedecked with German virtues. I think I know
- 3:23:55Speaker 1: the Wagnerite. I have experienced three generations of them, from
- 3:24:00Speaker 1: Brendel of blessed Memory, who confounded Wagner with Hegel, to
- 3:24:06Speaker 1: the idealists of by the Right Gazette, who confounded Wagner
- 3:24:11Speaker 1: with themselves. I have been the recipient of every kind
- 3:24:16Speaker 1: of confession about Wagner, from beautiful Souls my kingdom, for
- 3:24:21Speaker 1: just one intelligent word in very truth, a blood curdling company, Nol,
- 3:24:28Speaker 1: Pole and Coal and others of their kidney to infinity.
- 3:24:35Speaker 1: Translator's footnote. Knol and a Poll were both writers on music. Coal, however,
- 3:24:43Speaker 1: which literally means cabbage, is slang expression denoting superior nonsense,
- 3:24:48Speaker 1: and translator's note there was not a single abortion that
- 3:24:53Speaker 1: was lacking among them, No, not even the anti Semite,
- 3:24:58Speaker 1: poor Wagner, who whose hands had he fallen, if only
- 3:25:02Speaker 1: he had gone into a herd of swine. But among
- 3:25:05Speaker 1: Germans some day, for the edification of posterity, one ought
- 3:25:10Speaker 1: really to have a genuine Bayroutian stuffed, or better still
- 3:25:15Speaker 1: preserved in spirit. For it is precisely spirit that is
- 3:25:19Speaker 1: lacking in this quarter. With this inscription at the foot
- 3:25:23Speaker 1: of the jar, a sample of the spirit whereon the
- 3:25:27Speaker 1: German Empire was founded. But enough, in the middle of festivities,
- 3:25:33Speaker 1: I suddenly packed my trunk and left the place for
- 3:25:36Speaker 1: a few weeks. Despite the fact that a charming Parisian
- 3:25:40Speaker 1: lady sought to comfort me, I excused myself to Wagner
- 3:25:44Speaker 1: simply by means of a fatalistic telegram in a little
- 3:25:49Speaker 1: spot called Klingenbrung, deeply buried in the recesses of the Boumwald,
- 3:25:55Speaker 1: I carried my melancholy and my contempt for Germans about
- 3:25:59Speaker 1: with me like an illness, and from time to time,
- 3:26:04Speaker 1: under the general title of the plowshare, I wrote a
- 3:26:08Speaker 1: sentence or two down in my notebooks. Nothing but severe
- 3:26:12Speaker 1: psychological stuff, which it is possible may have found its
- 3:26:17Speaker 1: way into human all too human. Three. That which had
- 3:26:25Speaker 1: taken place in me then was not only a breach
- 3:26:29Speaker 1: with Wagner. I was suffering from a general aberration of
- 3:26:33Speaker 1: my instincts, of which admere isolated blunder. Whether it were
- 3:26:38Speaker 1: Wagner or my professorship at Balah was nothing more than
- 3:26:43Speaker 1: a symptom. I was seized with a fit of impatience
- 3:26:46Speaker 1: with myself. I saw that it was high time that
- 3:26:50Speaker 1: I should turn my thoughts upon my own lot. In
- 3:26:54Speaker 1: a thrice, I realized with appalling clearness how much time
- 3:26:59Speaker 1: had already been squandered, how futile and how senseless my
- 3:27:04Speaker 1: whole existence as a philologist appeared by the side of
- 3:27:07Speaker 1: my life task. I was ashamed of this false modesty.
- 3:27:13Speaker 1: Ten years were behind me, during which, to tell a truth,
- 3:27:17Speaker 1: the nourishment of my spirit had been at a standstill,
- 3:27:21Speaker 1: during which I had added not a single useful fragment
- 3:27:24Speaker 1: to my knowledge, and had forgotten countless things in the
- 3:27:28Speaker 1: pursuit of a hotch potch of dry as dust scholarship
- 3:27:33Speaker 1: to crawl with meticulous care and short sighted eyes through
- 3:27:37Speaker 1: old Greek metricans. That is what I had come to
- 3:27:42Speaker 1: moved to pity. I saw myself, quite thin, quite emaciated,
- 3:27:48Speaker 1: realities were only too plainly absent from my stock of knowledge,
- 3:27:53Speaker 1: and what the ideal it is were worth the devil alone,
- 3:27:56Speaker 1: you are positively burning. Thirst overcame me, and from that
- 3:28:01Speaker 1: time forward I had done literally nothing else than study psychology,
- 3:28:07Speaker 1: medicine and natural science. I even returned to the actual
- 3:28:11Speaker 1: study of history only when my life task compelled me to.
- 3:28:16Speaker 1: It was at the time, too, that I first divined
- 3:28:20Speaker 1: the relation between the instinctively repulsive occupation a so called vocation,
- 3:28:27Speaker 1: which is the last thing to which one is called,
- 3:28:31Speaker 1: and that need of lulling a feeling of emptiness and
- 3:28:34Speaker 1: hunger by means of an art which is an narcotic
- 3:28:38Speaker 1: by means of Wagner's art, for instance, After looking carefully
- 3:28:43Speaker 1: about me, I have discovered that a large number of
- 3:28:46Speaker 1: young men are all in the same state of distress.
- 3:28:51Speaker 1: One kind of unnatural practice perforce leads to another. In Germany,
- 3:28:56Speaker 1: or rather to avoid all ambiguity in the Empire, only
- 3:29:02Speaker 1: too many are condemned to determine their choice too soon,
- 3:29:06Speaker 1: and then to pine away beneath a burden that they
- 3:29:09Speaker 1: can no longer throw off translator's footnote. Needless to say,
- 3:29:15Speaker 1: Nietsure distinguishes between Bismarcki in Germany and that other Germany, Austria,
- 3:29:21Speaker 1: Switzerland and the Baltic provinces where the German language is
- 3:29:25Speaker 1: also spoken. End of translator's note. Such creatures crave for
- 3:29:30Speaker 1: Wagner as for an Opate. They are thus able to
- 3:29:35Speaker 1: forget themselves, to be rid of themselves for a moment.
- 3:29:39Speaker 1: What am I saying? For five or six hours?
- 3:29:44Speaker 3: Four?
- 3:29:45Speaker 1: At this time my instincts turn resolutely against any further
- 3:29:50Speaker 1: yielding or following on my part, and any further misunderstanding
- 3:29:54Speaker 1: of myself. Every kind of life, the most unfavorable circumstance, illness, poverty,
- 3:30:02Speaker 1: anything seemed to me preferable to that undignified selfishness into
- 3:30:07Speaker 1: which I had fallen in the first place, thanks to
- 3:30:11Speaker 1: my ignorance and youth, and in which I had afterwards
- 3:30:15Speaker 1: remained owing to laziness, the so called sense of duty.
- 3:30:20Speaker 1: At this juncture there came to my help in a
- 3:30:23Speaker 1: way that I cannot sufficiently admire, and precisely at the
- 3:30:27Speaker 1: right time, that evil heritage which I derive from my
- 3:30:31Speaker 1: father's side of the family, and which at bottom is
- 3:30:36Speaker 1: no more than a predisposition to die young. Illness slowly
- 3:30:41Speaker 1: liberated me from the toils. It spared me any sort
- 3:30:45Speaker 1: of sudden breach, any sort of violent and offensive step.
- 3:30:50Speaker 1: At that time I lost not a particle of the
- 3:30:54Speaker 1: good will of others, but rather added to my store.
- 3:30:58Speaker 1: Illness likewise gave me the right completely to reverse my
- 3:31:02Speaker 1: mode of life. It not only allowed, it actually commanded
- 3:31:07Speaker 1: me to forget. It bestowed upon me in the necessity
- 3:31:12Speaker 1: of lying still, of having leisure, of waiting, and of
- 3:31:17Speaker 1: exercising patience. But all this means thinking the state of
- 3:31:24Speaker 1: my eyes alone put an end to all book wormishness,
- 3:31:28Speaker 1: or in plain English philology. I was thus delivered from books.
- 3:31:34Speaker 1: For years I ceased from reading. And this was the
- 3:31:38Speaker 1: greatest boon I ever conferred upon myself, that nethermost self,
- 3:31:44Speaker 1: which was, as it were, entombed, and which had grown
- 3:31:48Speaker 1: dumb because it had been forced to listen perpetually to
- 3:31:52Speaker 1: other selves. For that is what reading means. Slowly awakened.
- 3:31:57Speaker 1: At first it was shy and doubtful, but at last
- 3:32:01Speaker 1: it spoke again. Never have I rejoiced more over my
- 3:32:07Speaker 1: condition than during the sickest and most painful moments of
- 3:32:11Speaker 1: my life. You have only to examine the dawn of day,
- 3:32:16Speaker 1: or perhaps the Wanderer and his Shadow Translator's footnote, Human
- 3:32:22Speaker 1: All to Human, Part two in this edition end Translator's
- 3:32:27Speaker 1: footnote in order to understand what this returned to myself
- 3:32:32Speaker 1: actually meant in itself. It was the highest kind of recovery.
- 3:32:38Speaker 1: My cure was simply the result of it. Five Human
- 3:32:47Speaker 1: All to human. This monument of a course of vigorous
- 3:32:52Speaker 1: self discipline, by means of which I put an abrupt
- 3:32:56Speaker 1: end to all the superior buncom idealism, beautiful feelings, and
- 3:33:03Speaker 1: other effeminisis that had percolated into my being was written
- 3:33:08Speaker 1: principally in Sorrento. It was finished and given definitive shape
- 3:33:14Speaker 1: during a winter at Bala, under conditions far less favorable
- 3:33:19Speaker 1: than those in Sorrento. Truth to tell, it was Peter Gast,
- 3:33:25Speaker 1: at that time, a student at the University of Bala
- 3:33:28Speaker 1: and a devoted friend of mine, who was responsible for
- 3:33:31Speaker 1: the book. With my head wrapped in bandages and extremely painful,
- 3:33:37Speaker 1: I dictated while he wrote and corrected as he went along.
- 3:33:41Speaker 1: To be accurate. He was the real composer, whereas I
- 3:33:46Speaker 1: was only the author when the completed book ultimately reached me,
- 3:33:51Speaker 1: to the great surprise of the serious invalid I then
- 3:33:55Speaker 1: was I sent, among others, two copies to buy. Thanks
- 3:34:01Speaker 1: to a miraculous flash of intelligence on the part of chance,
- 3:34:05Speaker 1: there reached me precisely at the same time a splendid
- 3:34:09Speaker 1: copy of the past of our text, with the following
- 3:34:12Speaker 1: inscription from Wagner's pen to his dear friend Friedrichnietzsche from
- 3:34:18Speaker 1: Richard Wagner, ecclesiastical counselor. At this crossing of the two books,
- 3:34:25Speaker 1: I seemed to hear an ominous note. Did not sound
- 3:34:29Speaker 1: as if two swords had crossed. At all events, we
- 3:34:34Speaker 1: both felt this was so, for each of us remained silent.
- 3:34:39Speaker 1: At about this time the first Bayreuth pamphlets appeared, and
- 3:34:43Speaker 1: then I understood the move on my part, for which
- 3:34:46Speaker 1: it was high time incredible. Wagner had become pious six.
- 3:34:55Speaker 1: My attitude to myself at that time eighteen seventy six,
- 3:35:00Speaker 1: and the unearthly certitude with which I grasped my life
- 3:35:04Speaker 1: task and all its world historical consequences, is well revealed
- 3:35:09Speaker 1: throughout the book, but more particularly in one very significant passage.
- 3:35:15Speaker 1: Despite the fact that, with my instinctive cunning, I once
- 3:35:20Speaker 1: more circumvented the use of the little word. I not, however,
- 3:35:25Speaker 1: this time, in order to shed world historic glory on
- 3:35:28Speaker 1: the names of Schopenhauer and Wagner, but that on another
- 3:35:32Speaker 1: of my friends, the excellent doctor Paul Ree, fortunately much
- 3:35:37Speaker 1: too acute a creature to be deceived. Others were less subtle.
- 3:35:42Speaker 1: Among my readers, I have a number of hopeless people,
- 3:35:47Speaker 1: the typical German professor, for instance, who can always be
- 3:35:50Speaker 1: recognized from the fact that, judging from the passage in question,
- 3:35:55Speaker 1: he feels compelled to regard the whole book as sort
- 3:35:58Speaker 1: of superior realism. As a matter of fact, it contradicts
- 3:36:04Speaker 1: five or six of my friend's utterances. Only read the
- 3:36:08Speaker 1: Introduction to the Genealogy of Morals on this question. The
- 3:36:13Speaker 1: passage above referred to reads, what, after all, is the
- 3:36:18Speaker 1: principal axiom to which the boldest and coldest thinker, the
- 3:36:23Speaker 1: author of the book on the Origin of Moral Sensations?
- 3:36:27Speaker 1: Read Nietzsche, the first to moralist, has attained by means
- 3:36:32Speaker 1: of his incisive and decisive analysis of human actions. The
- 3:36:38Speaker 1: moral man, he says, is no nearer to the intelligible
- 3:36:43Speaker 1: metaphysical world than the physical man, for there is no
- 3:36:47Speaker 1: intelligible world. This theory, hardened and sharpened under the hammer
- 3:36:54Speaker 1: blow of historical knowledge read the transvaluation of all values, may,
- 3:37:00Speaker 1: some time or other, perhaps in some future period eighteen
- 3:37:05Speaker 1: ninety serve as the act which is applied to the
- 3:37:08Speaker 1: root of the metaphysical need of man. Whether more as
- 3:37:13Speaker 1: a blessing than a curse to the general welfare, it
- 3:37:16Speaker 1: is not easy to say, but in any case, as
- 3:37:20Speaker 1: a theory with the most important consequences, at once fruitful
- 3:37:24Speaker 1: and terrible, and looking into the world with that Janus
- 3:37:29Speaker 1: face which all great knowledge possesses. Translates footnote Human All
- 3:37:36Speaker 1: to Human, Volume one, Aphorism, thirty seven, end Translators, footnote
- 3:37:45Speaker 1: the dawn of day. Thoughts about morality as a prejudice
- 3:37:51Speaker 1: one With this book, I open my campaign against morality,
- 3:37:57Speaker 1: not that it is at all readily of powder. You
- 3:38:01Speaker 1: will find quite another and much nicer smells in it,
- 3:38:05Speaker 1: provided that you have any keenness in your nostrils. There
- 3:38:12Speaker 1: is nothing either of light or of heavy artillery in
- 3:38:15Speaker 1: its composition. And if its general end be a negative one,
- 3:38:21Speaker 1: its means are not so means out of which the
- 3:38:26Speaker 1: end follows like a logical conclusion, not like a cannon shot.
- 3:38:31Speaker 1: And if the reader takes leave of this book with
- 3:38:34Speaker 1: the feeling of timid caution in regard to everything which
- 3:38:38Speaker 1: has hitherto been honored and even worshiped under the name
- 3:38:41Speaker 1: of morality, it does not alter the fact that there
- 3:38:45Speaker 1: is not one negative word, not one attack, and not
- 3:38:50Speaker 1: one single piece of malice in the whole work. On
- 3:38:53Speaker 1: the contrary, it lies in the sunshine, smooth and happy,
- 3:38:59Speaker 1: like a marine animal basking in the sun between two rocks.
- 3:39:04Speaker 1: For after all, I was this marine animal. Almost every
- 3:39:08Speaker 1: sentence in the book was thought out, or rather caught
- 3:39:12Speaker 1: among that medley of rocks, in the neighborhood of Genoa,
- 3:39:16Speaker 1: where I lived quite alone, and exchange secrets with the ocean.
- 3:39:22Speaker 1: Even to this day, when by chance I happened to
- 3:39:25Speaker 1: turn over the leaves of this book, almost every sentence
- 3:39:29Speaker 1: seems to me like a hook, by means of which
- 3:39:32Speaker 1: I draw something incomparable out of the depths. Its whole
- 3:39:37Speaker 1: skin quivers with delicate shudders of recollection. This book is conspicuous,
- 3:39:43Speaker 1: for no little art in gently catching things which whisk
- 3:39:48Speaker 1: rapidly and silently away moments of which I call godlike lizards,
- 3:39:54Speaker 1: not with the cruelty of that young Greek god who
- 3:39:57Speaker 1: simply transfects the poor little beast, but nevertheless with something
- 3:40:02Speaker 1: pointed with a pen. There are so many dawns which
- 3:40:09Speaker 1: have not yet shed their light. This Indian maxim is
- 3:40:13Speaker 1: written over the doorway of this book. Where does its
- 3:40:18Speaker 1: author seek that new morning, that delicate read as yet undiscovered,
- 3:40:23Speaker 1: with which another day, ah, The whole series of days,
- 3:40:27Speaker 1: a whole world of new days, will begin in the
- 3:40:31Speaker 1: transvaluation of all values, in an emancipation from all moral values,
- 3:40:37Speaker 1: in a saying of Yea, and in an attitude of
- 3:40:41Speaker 1: trust to all that which hitherto has been forbidden, despised,
- 3:40:46Speaker 1: and damned. This yea saying book projects its light, its love,
- 3:40:53Speaker 1: its tenderness over all evil things. It restores to them
- 3:40:57Speaker 1: their soul, their clear conscience, and their superior right and
- 3:41:03Speaker 1: privilege to exist on earth. Morality is not assailed. It
- 3:41:07Speaker 1: simply ceases to be considered. This book closes with a
- 3:41:12Speaker 1: word or it is the only book which closes with
- 3:41:17Speaker 1: an or.
- 3:41:20Speaker 2: Two.
- 3:41:22Speaker 1: My life task is to prepare for humanity one supreme
- 3:41:27Speaker 1: moment in which it can come to its senses, a
- 3:41:31Speaker 1: great noon in which it will turn its gaze backwards
- 3:41:34Speaker 1: and forwards, in which it will step from under the
- 3:41:38Speaker 1: yoke of accidents and of priests, and for the first
- 3:41:42Speaker 1: time said the questions of the why and wherefore of
- 3:41:46Speaker 1: humanity as a whole. This life task naturally follows out
- 3:41:51Speaker 1: of the conviction that mankind does not get on the
- 3:41:55Speaker 1: right road of its own accord, that it is by
- 3:41:59Speaker 1: no means to vinely ruled, but rather that it is
- 3:42:03Speaker 1: precisely under the cover of its most holy valuations, that
- 3:42:08Speaker 1: the instinct of negation, of corruption, out of degeneration, have
- 3:42:13Speaker 1: held such a seductive sway. The question concerning the origin
- 3:42:18Speaker 1: of moral valuations is therefore a matter of the highest
- 3:42:23Speaker 1: importance to me, because it determines the future of mankind.
- 3:42:29Speaker 1: The demand made upon us to believe that everything is
- 3:42:32Speaker 1: really in the best hands, that a certain book, the Bible,
- 3:42:37Speaker 1: gives us the definite and comforting assurance that there is
- 3:42:41Speaker 1: a providence that wisely rules the fate of man, when
- 3:42:46Speaker 1: translated back into reality, amounts simply to this, namely, the
- 3:42:51Speaker 1: will to stifle the truth which maintains the reverse of
- 3:42:54Speaker 1: all this, which is that hitherto man has been in
- 3:42:59Speaker 1: the words possible hands, and that he has been governed
- 3:43:04Speaker 1: by the physiologically botched, the men of cunning and burning revengefulness,
- 3:43:10Speaker 1: and the so called saints, those slanderers of the world
- 3:43:15Speaker 1: and traducers of humanity. The definite proof of the fact
- 3:43:22Speaker 1: that the priest, including the priest in disguise the philosopher,
- 3:43:26Speaker 1: has become master not only within a certain limited religious community,
- 3:43:31Speaker 1: but everywhere, And that the morality of decadence, the will
- 3:43:35Speaker 1: to nonentity, has become morality per se, is to be
- 3:43:40Speaker 1: found in this that altruism is now an absolute value,
- 3:43:46Speaker 1: and egotism is regarded with hostility everywhere. He who disagrees
- 3:43:51Speaker 1: with me on this point are regarded as infected, but
- 3:43:55Speaker 1: all the world disagrees with me. To a psychologist, like
- 3:43:59Speaker 1: anti pagonism between values omits of no doubt. If the
- 3:44:04Speaker 1: most insignificant organ within the body neglects, however slightly, to
- 3:44:09Speaker 1: assert with absolute certainty its self preservative powers, its recuperative claims,
- 3:44:17Speaker 1: and its egotism, the whole system degenerates. The psychologist insists
- 3:44:23Speaker 1: upon the removal of degenerated parts, he denies all fellow
- 3:44:28Speaker 1: feelings for such parts, and has not the smallest feeling
- 3:44:32Speaker 1: of pity for them. But the desire of the priest
- 3:44:36Speaker 1: is precisely the degeneration of the whole of mankind. Hence
- 3:44:41Speaker 1: his preservation of that which is degenerate. This is what
- 3:44:45Speaker 1: his dominion costs humanity. What meaning have those lying concepts
- 3:44:52Speaker 1: whose handmaids of morality, soul, spirit, free will, God, if
- 3:44:58Speaker 1: their aim is not the physiological ruin of mankind? When
- 3:45:04Speaker 1: earnestness is diverted from the instincts that aim at self
- 3:45:07Speaker 1: preservation and an increase if bodily energy i e. At
- 3:45:13Speaker 1: an increase of life, when anemia is raised to an ideal,
- 3:45:20Speaker 1: and the contempt of the body is construed as the
- 3:45:23Speaker 1: salvation of the soul. What is all this if it
- 3:45:28Speaker 1: is not a recipe for decadence, loss of ballast, resistance
- 3:45:33Speaker 1: offered to natural instincts selflessness. In fact, this is what
- 3:45:39Speaker 1: has hitherto been known as morality. With the dawn of day,
- 3:45:46Speaker 1: I first engaged in a struggle against the morality of
- 3:45:51Speaker 1: self renunciation, joyful wisdom, La cienza. One dawn of Day
- 3:46:04Speaker 1: is a yay saying book, profound but clear and kindly.
- 3:46:10Speaker 1: The same applies once more, and in the highest degree
- 3:46:13Speaker 1: to Lagaya Shienza. In almost every sentence of this book,
- 3:46:19Speaker 1: profundity and playfulness go gently hand in hand. A verse
- 3:46:24Speaker 1: which expresses my gratitude for the most wonderful month of
- 3:46:28Speaker 1: January which I have ever lived. The whole book is
- 3:46:31Speaker 1: a gift sufficiently reveals the abyssmal depths from which wisdom
- 3:46:37Speaker 1: has here become joyful Thou, who, with cleaving fiery lances
- 3:46:44Speaker 1: the stream of my soul from its ice, doth free,
- 3:46:48Speaker 1: till with a rush and a roar it advances to
- 3:46:52Speaker 1: enter with glorious hoping, the sea brighter to see, and
- 3:46:56Speaker 1: purer ever free in the bonds of thy sweet straint,
- 3:47:01Speaker 1: so it praises thy wondrous endeavor January. Thou beauteous saint.
- 3:47:07Speaker 1: Translator's note translated for Joyful Wisdom by Paul V. Cohen
- 3:47:12Speaker 1: and translator's note. Who can here be in any doubt
- 3:47:17Speaker 1: as to what glorious hoping means?
- 3:47:19Speaker 3: Here?
- 3:47:21Speaker 1: When he has realized the diamond beauty of the first
- 3:47:25Speaker 1: of Zarathustra's words as they appear in the glow of
- 3:47:29Speaker 1: light are the close of the fourth book, or when
- 3:47:33Speaker 1: he reads the granite sentences at the end of the
- 3:47:36Speaker 1: third book, wherein a fate for all times is first
- 3:47:40Speaker 1: given a formula. The songs of Prince Free as a Bird,
- 3:47:44Speaker 1: which for the most part were written in sicily, remind
- 3:47:48Speaker 1: me quite forcibly of that provincial notion of Gaya Scienza,
- 3:47:55Speaker 1: of that union of singer, knight and free spirit, which
- 3:47:59Speaker 1: distinguish WHI is that wonderfully early culture of the Pavensals
- 3:48:04Speaker 1: from all ambiguous cultures. The last poem of all, to
- 3:48:10Speaker 1: the Mistral, is an exuberant dance song in which, if
- 3:48:14Speaker 1: you please, the new Spirit dances freely upon the corpse
- 3:48:18Speaker 1: of morality. Is a perfect Pavan Saralism. Thus spake Zarathustra,
- 3:48:32Speaker 1: a book for all and none one. I now wish
- 3:48:37Speaker 1: to relate the history of Zarathustra. The fundamental idea of
- 3:48:42Speaker 1: the work, the eternal recurrence, the highest formula of a
- 3:48:48Speaker 1: yay saying to life that can ever be attained, was
- 3:48:52Speaker 1: first conceived in the month of August eighteen eighty one.
- 3:48:57Speaker 1: I made a note of the idea on a sheet
- 3:48:59Speaker 1: of paper with the PostScript six thousand feet beyond man
- 3:49:03Speaker 1: and time. That day I happened to be wandering through
- 3:49:08Speaker 1: the woods alongside the lake of silver Plana, and I halted,
- 3:49:13Speaker 1: not far from Surli, beside a huge rock that towered
- 3:49:17Speaker 1: aloft like a pyramid. It was then that the thought
- 3:49:21Speaker 1: struck me. Looking back now, I find that exactly two
- 3:49:27Speaker 1: months before this inspiration I had an omen of its coming,
- 3:49:30Speaker 1: in the form of a sudden and decisive change in
- 3:49:33Speaker 1: my tastes, more particularly in music. The whole of Zarathustra
- 3:49:40Speaker 1: might perhaps be classified under the rubric music. At all events,
- 3:49:46Speaker 1: the essential condition of its production was a second birth
- 3:49:50Speaker 1: within me of the art of hearing. In Recaro, a
- 3:49:56Speaker 1: small mountain resort near Vicenza, I spent the spring of
- 3:50:01Speaker 1: eighteen eighty one, I and my friend Maestro Peter Gast,
- 3:50:06Speaker 1: who was also one who had been born again, discovered
- 3:50:10Speaker 1: that the Phoenix music hovered over us in lighter and
- 3:50:14Speaker 1: brighter plumage than it had ever worn before. If therefore,
- 3:50:20Speaker 1: I now calculated from that day forward the sudden production
- 3:50:24Speaker 1: of the book and the most unlikely circumstances. In February
- 3:50:29Speaker 1: eighteen eighty three, the last part out of which I
- 3:50:33Speaker 1: quoted a few lines in my preface, was written precisely
- 3:50:37Speaker 1: in the hallowed hour, when Richard Wagner gave up the
- 3:50:41Speaker 1: ghost in Venice. I come to the conclusion that the
- 3:50:45Speaker 1: period of gestation covered eighteen months. This period of exactly
- 3:50:50Speaker 1: eighteen months might suggest, at least to Buddhists that I
- 3:50:54Speaker 1: am in reality a female elephant. The interval was de
- 3:50:59Speaker 1: voted to the Gaya Scienza, which contains hundreds of indications
- 3:51:05Speaker 1: of the proximity of something unparalleled. For after all, it
- 3:51:11Speaker 1: shows the beginning of Zarathustra, since it presents Zarathustra's fundamental
- 3:51:18Speaker 1: thought in the last aphorism. But one of the fourth
- 3:51:22Speaker 1: book to this interval also belongs that hymn to Life
- 3:51:28Speaker 1: for a mixed choir and orchestra, the score of which
- 3:51:32Speaker 1: was published in Leipzig two years ago by E. V. Fritsch,
- 3:51:38Speaker 1: and which gave perhaps no slight indication of my spiritual
- 3:51:42Speaker 1: state during this year, in which the essentially yea saying Pathos,
- 3:51:50Speaker 1: which I call the tragic Pathos, completely filled me heart
- 3:51:54Speaker 1: and limb. One day people will sing it to my memory.
- 3:51:59Speaker 1: The texx let it be well understood, as there is
- 3:52:03Speaker 1: some misunderstanding abroad on this point, is not by me.
- 3:52:07Speaker 1: It was the astounding inspiration of a young Russian lady,
- 3:52:12Speaker 1: Miss lou von Salome, with whom I was then on
- 3:52:16Speaker 1: friendly terms. He who is in any way able to
- 3:52:20Speaker 1: make sense of the last words of the poem will
- 3:52:24Speaker 1: divine why I preferred and admired it. There is greatness
- 3:52:28Speaker 1: in them. Pain is not regarded as an objection to existence.
- 3:52:34Speaker 1: And if thou hast noblest left to crown me, lead
- 3:52:38Speaker 1: on thou hast thy sorrow, still, maybe that my music
- 3:52:45Speaker 1: is also great. In this passage, the last note of
- 3:52:48Speaker 1: the oboe by the bye is c sharp. Not see
- 3:52:52Speaker 1: the latter is a misprint. During the following winter, I
- 3:52:56Speaker 1: was living on that charming, peaceful Gulf of Rapallo, not
- 3:53:00Speaker 1: far from Genoa, which cuts inland between Chaivari and Cape
- 3:53:05Speaker 1: Porto Fino. My health was not very good. The winter
- 3:53:09Speaker 1: was cold and exceptionally rainy, and the small albago in
- 3:53:14Speaker 1: which I lived was so close to the water that
- 3:53:17Speaker 1: at night my sleep was disturbed if the sea was rough.
- 3:53:22Speaker 1: These circumstances were surely the very reverse of favorable. And yet,
- 3:53:27Speaker 1: in spite of it all, and as if in proof
- 3:53:31Speaker 1: of my belief that everything decisive comes to life in
- 3:53:35Speaker 1: defiance of every obstacle, it was precisely during this winter
- 3:53:40Speaker 1: and in the midst of these unfavorable circumstances that my
- 3:53:44Speaker 1: Zarathustra originated. In the morning, I used to start out
- 3:53:49Speaker 1: in a southerly direction up the glorious road to Tsuali,
- 3:53:53Speaker 1: which rises up through a forest of pines and gives
- 3:53:57Speaker 1: one a view far out to sea. In the afternoon,
- 3:54:02Speaker 1: or as often as my health allowed, I walked round
- 3:54:05Speaker 1: the whole bay from Saint Margaerita to beyond Porta Fino.
- 3:54:10Speaker 1: This spot affected me all the more deeply because it
- 3:54:13Speaker 1: was so dearly loved by the Emperor Frederic the Third.
- 3:54:17Speaker 1: In the autumn of eighteen eighty six, I chanced to
- 3:54:20Speaker 1: be there again when he was revisiting this small, forgotten
- 3:54:25Speaker 1: world of happiness for the last time. It was on
- 3:54:29Speaker 1: these two roads that all Zarathustra came to me. Above
- 3:54:33Speaker 1: all Zarathustra himself as a type, I ought rather to
- 3:54:39Speaker 1: say that it was on these walks that he waylaid me.
- 3:54:47Speaker 2: Two.
- 3:54:49Speaker 1: In order to understand this type, you must first be
- 3:54:53Speaker 1: quite clear concerning its fundamental physiological condition. This condition is
- 3:55:00Speaker 1: what I call great healthiness. In regard to this idea,
- 3:55:06Speaker 1: I cannot make my meaning more plain or more personal
- 3:55:09Speaker 1: than I have already done. In one of the last
- 3:55:12Speaker 1: aphorisms number three hundred and eighty two of the fifth
- 3:55:16Speaker 1: book of the gay Yas Gienza, we knew nameless and
- 3:55:23Speaker 1: unfathomable creatures, so reads the passage, we first things of
- 3:55:28Speaker 1: a future still unproved. We who have a new end
- 3:55:32Speaker 1: in view, also require new means to that end, that
- 3:55:36Speaker 1: is to say, a new healthiness. Are stronger, keener, tougher, bolder,
- 3:55:42Speaker 1: and merrier healthiness than any that has existed. Heretofore, he
- 3:55:47Speaker 1: who longs to feel in his own soul the whole
- 3:55:50Speaker 1: range of values and aims that have prevailed on Earth
- 3:55:54Speaker 1: until his day, and to sail around all the coasts
- 3:55:58Speaker 1: of this ideal met terranean sea, who from the adventures
- 3:56:03Speaker 1: of his own inmost experience, would fain know how it
- 3:56:07Speaker 1: feels to be a conqueror and a discoverer of the ideal.
- 3:56:12Speaker 1: As also how it is with the artist, the saint,
- 3:56:16Speaker 1: the legislator, the sage, the scholar, the man of piety,
- 3:56:22Speaker 1: and the godlike anchorite of your Such a man requires
- 3:56:27Speaker 1: one thing above all for his purpose, and that is
- 3:56:31Speaker 1: great healthiness, such healthiness as he not only possesses, but
- 3:56:37Speaker 1: also constantly acquires and must acquire, because he is continually
- 3:56:42Speaker 1: sacrificing it again, and is compelled to sacrifice it. And now, therefore,
- 3:56:51Speaker 1: after having been long on the way, we argonauts of
- 3:56:54Speaker 1: the ideal, whose pluck is greater than prudence would allow,
- 3:56:59Speaker 1: and who are off shipwrecked and bruised. But as I
- 3:57:02Speaker 1: have said, healthier than people would like to admit, dangerously healthy,
- 3:57:08Speaker 1: and forever recovering our health. It would seem as if
- 3:57:12Speaker 1: we had before us, as a reward for all our toils,
- 3:57:16Speaker 1: a country still undiscovered, the horizon of which no one
- 3:57:20Speaker 1: has yet seen, a beyond to every country and every
- 3:57:24Speaker 1: refuge of the ideal that man has ever known, a
- 3:57:29Speaker 1: world so overflowing with beauty, strangeness, doubt, terror, and divinity,
- 3:57:36Speaker 1: that both our curiosity and our lust of possession are
- 3:57:41Speaker 1: frantic with eagerness. Alas how, in the face of such vistas,
- 3:57:47Speaker 1: and with such burning desire in our conscience and consciousness,
- 3:57:51Speaker 1: could we still be content with the man of the
- 3:57:54Speaker 1: present day? This is bad, indeed, But that we should
- 3:58:00Speaker 1: regard his worthiest aims and hopes with ill concealed amusement,
- 3:58:06Speaker 1: or perhaps give them no thought at all, is inevitable.
- 3:58:10Speaker 1: Another ideal now leads us on a wonderful, seductive ideal,
- 3:58:15Speaker 1: full of danger, the pursuit of which we should be
- 3:58:19Speaker 1: loath to urge upon anyone, because we are not so
- 3:58:23Speaker 1: ready to acknowledge anyone's right to it. The ideal of
- 3:58:29Speaker 1: a spirit who plays ingeniously, that is to say, involuntarily,
- 3:58:34Speaker 1: and as the outcome of superabundant energy and power, with
- 3:58:40Speaker 1: everything that hitherto has been called wholly good, inviolable, and divine,
- 3:58:48Speaker 1: to whom even the loftiest thing that the people have
- 3:58:52Speaker 1: with reason made their measure of value would be no
- 3:58:55Speaker 1: better than a danger, a decay, and an obey or
- 3:59:01Speaker 1: at least a relaxation and temporary forgetfulness of self. The
- 3:59:07Speaker 1: ideal of humanly superhuman well being and goodwill, which often
- 3:59:12Speaker 1: enough will seem inhuman as when, for instance, it stands
- 3:59:17Speaker 1: beside all past earnestness on earth and all past solemnities.
- 3:59:23Speaker 1: In hearing speech tone look morality and duty as their
- 3:59:30Speaker 1: most lifelike and unconscious parody, but with which nevertheless great earnestness,
- 3:59:38Speaker 1: perhaps alone begins. The first note of interrogation is affixed,
- 3:59:43Speaker 1: the fate of the soul changes, the hour hand moves,
- 3:59:48Speaker 1: and tragedy begins three. Has anyone at the end of
- 3:59:58Speaker 1: the nineteenth century any distinct notion of what poets of
- 4:00:02Speaker 1: a strong age understood by the word inspiration. If not,
- 4:00:08Speaker 1: I will describe it. If one had the smallest vestige
- 4:00:13Speaker 1: of superstition left in one, it would hardly be possible
- 4:00:17Speaker 1: completely to set aside the idea that one is the
- 4:00:21Speaker 1: mere incarnation, mouthpiece or medium of an almighty power. The
- 4:00:27Speaker 1: idea of revelation, in the sense that something which profoundly
- 4:00:32Speaker 1: convulses and upsets one becomes suddenly visible and audible with
- 4:00:37Speaker 1: indescribable certainty and accuracy, describes the simple fact one hears,
- 4:00:45Speaker 1: one does not seek, one takes, one does not ask,
- 4:00:49Speaker 1: Who gives a thought suddenly flashes up like lightning. It
- 4:00:54Speaker 1: comes with necessity, without faltering. I have never had any
- 4:00:59Speaker 1: choice in the matter. There is an ecstasy so great
- 4:01:03Speaker 1: that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed by
- 4:01:07Speaker 1: a flood of tears, during which one's steps now involuntarily
- 4:01:12Speaker 1: rush and anon involuntarily lag. There is the feeling that
- 4:01:17Speaker 1: one is utterly out of hand with the very distinct
- 4:01:21Speaker 1: consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and titillations
- 4:01:27Speaker 1: to sending to one's very toes. There is a depth
- 4:01:32Speaker 1: of happiness in which the most painful and gloomy paths
- 4:01:36Speaker 1: do not act as antitheses to the rest, but are
- 4:01:41Speaker 1: produced and required as necessary shades of color. In such
- 4:01:46Speaker 1: an overflow of light, there is an instinct for rhythmic relations,
- 4:01:53Speaker 1: which embraces a whole world of forms length, the need
- 4:01:58Speaker 1: of a wide embrace rhythm is almost the measure of
- 4:02:03Speaker 1: the force of an inspiration, a sort of counterpart to
- 4:02:08Speaker 1: its pressure and tension. Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if
- 4:02:16Speaker 1: in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power
- 4:02:21Speaker 1: and divinity. The involuntary nature of the figures and similism
- 4:02:27Speaker 1: is the most remarkable thing. One loses all perception of
- 4:02:32Speaker 1: what is imagery and metaphor. Everything seems to present itself
- 4:02:38Speaker 1: as the readiest, the truest, and simplest means of expression.
- 4:02:44Speaker 1: It actually seems, to use one of Zarathustra's own phrases,
- 4:02:49Speaker 1: as if all things came to one and offered themselves
- 4:02:52Speaker 1: as similism. Here do all things come caressingly to thy
- 4:02:59Speaker 1: discourse and flatter thee, For they would fain ride upon thy,
- 4:03:03Speaker 1: back on every simile. Thou ridest Here unto every truth,
- 4:03:09Speaker 1: Here fly open, unto thee. All the speech and word
- 4:03:13Speaker 1: shrines of the world. Here would all existence become speech.
- 4:03:19Speaker 1: Here would all becoming learn of THEE how to speak.
- 4:03:24Speaker 1: This is my experience of inspiration. I do not doubt
- 4:03:30Speaker 1: but that I should have to go back thousands of
- 4:03:33Speaker 1: years before I could find another who could say to me,
- 4:03:37Speaker 1: it is mine.
- 4:03:38Speaker 2: Also four.
- 4:03:47Speaker 1: For a few weeks afterwards I lay an invalid in Genoa.
- 4:03:52Speaker 1: Then followed a melancholy spring in Rome, where I only
- 4:03:57Speaker 1: just managed to live. And this was no easy matter.
- 4:04:02Speaker 1: This city, which is absolutely unsuited to the poet author
- 4:04:07Speaker 1: of Zarathustra, and for the choice of which I was
- 4:04:10Speaker 1: not responsible, made me inordinately miserable. I tried to leave it.
- 4:04:17Speaker 1: I wanted to go to Aquilla, the opposite of Rome
- 4:04:21Speaker 1: in every respect, and actually found it in a spirit
- 4:04:24Speaker 1: of hostility towards that city, just as I also shall
- 4:04:29Speaker 1: found a city some day as a memento of an
- 4:04:32Speaker 1: atheist and a genuine enemy of the Church, a person
- 4:04:37Speaker 1: very closely related to me, the Great Hohenstaufen, the Emperor
- 4:04:42Speaker 1: Frederick the second, But fate lay behind it all I
- 4:04:46Speaker 1: had to return again to Rome. In the end I
- 4:04:50Speaker 1: was obliged to be satisfied with the Piazza Barberini. After
- 4:04:55Speaker 1: I had exerted myself in Vain to find an anti
- 4:04:58Speaker 1: Christian quarter, I fear that, on one occasion, to avoid
- 4:05:03Speaker 1: bad smells as much as possible, I actually inquired at
- 4:05:07Speaker 1: the Palazzo del Curinali whether they could not provide a
- 4:05:11Speaker 1: quiet room for a philosopher in a chamber high above
- 4:05:16Speaker 1: the piazza I just mentioned, from which one obtained a
- 4:05:20Speaker 1: general view of Rome, and could hear the fountains splashing
- 4:05:24Speaker 1: far below. The loneliest of all songs, as composed the
- 4:05:29Speaker 1: Night Song. About this time I was obsessed by an
- 4:05:33Speaker 1: unspeakably sad melody, the refrain of which I recognized in
- 4:05:38Speaker 1: the words dead through immortality. In the summer, finding myself
- 4:05:45Speaker 1: once more in the sacred place where the first thought
- 4:05:49Speaker 1: of Zarathustra flashed like a light across my mind, I
- 4:05:53Speaker 1: conceived the second part ten days sufficed. Neither for the second,
- 4:06:00Speaker 1: the first, nor the third parts have ever required a
- 4:06:04Speaker 1: day longer. In the ensuing winter, beneath the halkon sky
- 4:06:09Speaker 1: of Nice which then for the first time poured its
- 4:06:14Speaker 1: light into my life. I found the third Zarathustra and
- 4:06:20Speaker 1: came to the end of my task, the whole having
- 4:06:24Speaker 1: occupied me scarcely a year. Many hidden corners and heights
- 4:06:29Speaker 1: in the country round about Nice are hallowed for me
- 4:06:33Speaker 1: by moments that I can never forget. That decisive chapter
- 4:06:38Speaker 1: entitled Old and New Tables was composed during the arduous ascent.
- 4:06:45Speaker 2: From the station to Etza.
- 4:06:47Speaker 1: That wonderful Moorish village in the rocks. During those moments
- 4:06:52Speaker 1: when my creative energy flowed most plentifully, my muscular activity
- 4:06:57Speaker 1: was always greatest. The body is inspired. Let us weigh
- 4:07:02Speaker 1: the question of soul. I might often have been seen
- 4:07:06Speaker 1: dancing in those days, and could then walk for seven
- 4:07:10Speaker 1: or eight hours on end over the hills without a
- 4:07:13Speaker 1: suggestion or fatigue. I slept well and laughed a good deal.
- 4:07:18Speaker 1: I was perfectly robust and patient.
- 4:07:24Speaker 2: Five.
- 4:07:26Speaker 1: With the exception of these periods of industry lasting ten days,
- 4:07:31Speaker 1: the years I spent during the production of Zarathustra and
- 4:07:35Speaker 1: thereafter were for me years of unparalleled distress. A man
- 4:07:41Speaker 1: pays dearly for being immortal. To this end, he must
- 4:07:45Speaker 1: die many times over during his life. There is such
- 4:07:49Speaker 1: a thing as what I call the rancor of greatness.
- 4:07:54Speaker 1: Everything great, whether a work or a deed, once it
- 4:07:57Speaker 1: is completed, turns immediately against its author. The very fact
- 4:08:03Speaker 1: that he is its author makes him weak. At this time,
- 4:08:07Speaker 1: he can no longer endure his deed, He can no
- 4:08:11Speaker 1: longer look it full in the face. To have something
- 4:08:14Speaker 1: at one's back which one could never have willed, something
- 4:08:19Speaker 1: to which the knot of human destiny is attached, and
- 4:08:23Speaker 1: to be forced henceforth to bear it on one's shoulders,
- 4:08:27Speaker 1: why it almost crushes one. The wrangor of greatness. A
- 4:08:34Speaker 1: somewhat different experience is the uncanny silence that reigns about one.
- 4:08:40Speaker 1: Solitude has seven skins, which nothing can penetrate. One goes
- 4:08:45Speaker 1: among men, one greets friends, but these things are only
- 4:08:50Speaker 1: new deserts. The looks of those one meets no longer
- 4:08:55Speaker 1: bears a greeting. At the best, one encounters a sort
- 4:08:59Speaker 1: of revolt. This feeling of revolt I suffered, in varying
- 4:09:04Speaker 1: degrees of intensity, at the hands of almost everyone who
- 4:09:08Speaker 1: came near me. It would seem that nothing infects a
- 4:09:12Speaker 1: deeper wound than suddenly to make one's distance felt. Those
- 4:09:18Speaker 1: noble natures are scarce who know not how to live
- 4:09:22Speaker 1: unless they can revere. A third thing is the absurd
- 4:09:27Speaker 1: susceptibility of the skin to small pinpricks, a kind of
- 4:09:31Speaker 1: helplessness in the presence of all small things. This seems
- 4:09:36Speaker 1: to me a necessary outcome of the appalling expenditure of
- 4:09:40Speaker 1: all defensive forces, which is the first condition of every
- 4:09:45Speaker 1: creative act, of every act which proceeds from the most intimate,
- 4:09:51Speaker 1: most secret, and most concealed recesses of a man's being.
- 4:09:57Speaker 1: The small defensive forces are thus, as it were, suspended,
- 4:10:02Speaker 1: and no fresh energy reaches them. I even think it
- 4:10:06Speaker 1: probable that one does not digest so well, that one
- 4:10:11Speaker 1: is less willing to move, and that one is much
- 4:10:14Speaker 1: too open to sensations of coldness and suspicion.
- 4:10:19Speaker 3: Four.
- 4:10:20Speaker 1: In a large number of cases, suspicion is merely a
- 4:10:23Speaker 1: blunder in etiology. On one occasion when I felt like this,
- 4:10:30Speaker 1: I became conscious of the proximity of a herd of cows,
- 4:10:34Speaker 1: some time before I could possibly have seen it with
- 4:10:37Speaker 1: my eyes, simply owing to a return in me of
- 4:10:42Speaker 1: milder and more humane sentiments. They communicated warmth to me.
- 4:10:54Speaker 2: Six.
- 4:10:56Speaker 1: This work stands alone. Do not let us mention the
- 4:11:00Speaker 1: poets in the same breath. Nothing perhaps has ever been
- 4:11:03Speaker 1: produced out of such a superabundance of strength. My concept
- 4:11:09Speaker 1: Deunesian here became the highest deed. Compared with it, everything
- 4:11:16Speaker 1: that other men have done seems poor and limited. The
- 4:11:21Speaker 1: fact that a Girt or a Shakespeare would not for
- 4:11:24Speaker 1: an instant have known how to take breath in this
- 4:11:28Speaker 1: atmosphere of passion and of the heights. The fact that
- 4:11:33Speaker 1: by the side of Zarathustra Dante is no more than
- 4:11:37Speaker 1: a believer, and not one who first creates the truth,
- 4:11:43Speaker 1: that is to say, not a world ruling spirit, a fate.
- 4:11:48Speaker 2: The fact that.
- 4:11:49Speaker 1: The poets of the Veda were priests and not even
- 4:11:53Speaker 1: fit to unfasten Zarathustra's sandal. All this is the least
- 4:11:58Speaker 1: of things, and gives no idea of the distance of
- 4:12:02Speaker 1: the azure solitude in which this work dwells. Zarathustra as
- 4:12:09Speaker 1: an eternal right to say, I draw around me circles
- 4:12:14Speaker 1: and holy boundaries. Ever fewer are they that mount with
- 4:12:19Speaker 1: me to ever loftier heights. I build me a mountain
- 4:12:24Speaker 1: range of ever holier mountains. If all the spirit and
- 4:12:30Speaker 1: goodness of every great soul were collected together, the whole
- 4:12:35Speaker 1: could not create a single one of Zarathustra's discourses. The
- 4:12:39Speaker 1: ladder upon which he rises and ascends is of boundless length.
- 4:12:46Speaker 1: He has seen further, he has will further, and gone
- 4:12:51Speaker 1: further than any other man. There is contradiction in every
- 4:12:56Speaker 1: word he utters, this most yay saying of all spirits.
- 4:13:01Speaker 1: Through him, all contradictions are bound up into a new unity.
- 4:13:06Speaker 1: The loftiest and the basest powers of human nature, the sweetest,
- 4:13:12Speaker 1: the lightest, and the most terrible, rushed forth from out
- 4:13:17Speaker 1: one's spring with everlasting certainty. Until his coming, no one
- 4:13:23Speaker 1: knew what was height or depth, and still less what
- 4:13:27Speaker 1: was truth. There is not a single passage in this
- 4:13:31Speaker 1: revelation of truth which had already been anticipated and divined
- 4:13:37Speaker 1: by even the greatest among men. Before Zarathustra, there was
- 4:13:42Speaker 1: no wisdom, no probing of the soul, no art of speech.
- 4:13:48Speaker 1: In his book, the most familiar and most vulgar thing
- 4:13:52Speaker 1: utters unheard of words. The sentence quivers with passion. Eloquence
- 4:13:59Speaker 1: has become music. Forks of lightning are hurled towards futures
- 4:14:06Speaker 1: of which no one has ever dreamed before. The most
- 4:14:10Speaker 1: powerful use of powables that has yet existed is poor
- 4:14:14Speaker 1: beside it and mere child's play compared with this return
- 4:14:19Speaker 1: of language to the nature of imagery. See how Zarathustra
- 4:14:25Speaker 1: goes down from the mountain and speaks the kindest words
- 4:14:28Speaker 1: to everyone. See with what delicate fingers he touches his
- 4:14:33Speaker 1: very adversaries, the priests, and how he suffers with them
- 4:14:38Speaker 1: from themselves. Here at every moment, man is overcome, and
- 4:14:44Speaker 1: the concept superman becomes the greatest reality. Out of sight,
- 4:14:50Speaker 1: almost far away. Beneath him lies all that which heretofore
- 4:14:55Speaker 1: has been called great in man, the haliconic brightness, the
- 4:15:01Speaker 1: light feet, the presence of wickedness and exuberance throughout, and
- 4:15:07Speaker 1: all that is the essence of the type Zarathustra was
- 4:15:12Speaker 1: never dreamt of before, as the prequisite of greatness. In
- 4:15:17Speaker 1: precisely these limits of space, and in this accessibility to opposites,
- 4:15:24Speaker 1: Zarathustra feels himself the highest of all living things. And
- 4:15:29Speaker 1: when you hear how he defines this highest, you will
- 4:15:33Speaker 1: give up trying to find his equal. The soul which
- 4:15:39Speaker 1: hath the longest ladder and can step down deepest, the
- 4:15:44Speaker 1: vastest soul that can run and stray and row furthest
- 4:15:49Speaker 1: in its own domain, The most necessary soul that, out
- 4:15:54Speaker 1: of desire flingeth itself into chance. The stable soul that
- 4:15:59Speaker 1: play into becoming, The possessing soul that must needs taste
- 4:16:05Speaker 1: of willing and longing, the soul that flieth from itself
- 4:16:10Speaker 1: an overtaketh itself in the widest circle, The wisest soul
- 4:16:16Speaker 1: that folly exhorteth most sweetly, the most self loving soul
- 4:16:22Speaker 1: in whom all things have their rise, their ebb, and flow.
- 4:16:29Speaker 1: But this is the very idea of dionysis. Another consideration
- 4:16:35Speaker 1: leads to this idea. The psychological problem presented by the
- 4:16:40Speaker 1: type of Zarathustra is, how can he who, in an
- 4:16:45Speaker 1: unprecedented manner says no and acts no in regard to
- 4:16:51Speaker 1: all that which has been affirmed hitherto remained nevertheless a
- 4:16:56Speaker 1: yea saying spirit. How can he who bears the heaviest
- 4:17:01Speaker 1: destiny on his shoulders, and whose very life task is
- 4:17:05Speaker 1: a fatality, yet be the brightest and the most transcendental
- 4:17:10Speaker 1: of spirits. For Zarathustra is a dancer. How can he
- 4:17:16Speaker 1: who has the hardest and the most terrible grasp of reality,
- 4:17:21Speaker 1: and who has thought the most abyssmal thoughts, nevertheless avoid
- 4:17:26Speaker 1: conceiving these things as objections to existence, or even as
- 4:17:32Speaker 1: objections to the eternal recurrence of existence. How is it that,
- 4:17:38Speaker 1: on the contrary, he finds reasons for being himself the
- 4:17:43Speaker 1: eternal affirmation of all things, the tremendous and unlimited saying
- 4:17:48Speaker 1: of yea and Amen into every abyss do I bear
- 4:17:53Speaker 1: the benediction of my yea to life? But this, once
- 4:17:59Speaker 1: more is precisely the idea of Dionysus.
- 4:18:08Speaker 2: Seven.
- 4:18:10Speaker 1: What language will such a spirit speak when he speaks
- 4:18:14Speaker 1: unto his soul? The language of the diahthram. I am
- 4:18:19Speaker 1: the inventor of the diaphram. Hearken unto the manner in
- 4:18:24Speaker 1: which Zarathustras speaks to his soul before sunrise, Part three
- 4:18:30Speaker 1: forty eight, Before my time, such emerald joys and divine
- 4:18:36Speaker 1: tenderness had found no tongue. Even the profoundest melancholy of
- 4:18:42Speaker 1: such a Dionysus takes shape as a diaphram. As an
- 4:18:47Speaker 1: example of this, I take the night song, the immortal
- 4:18:52Speaker 1: plaint of one who, thanks to his superabundance of light
- 4:18:57Speaker 1: and power, thanks to the sun within him is condemned
- 4:19:01Speaker 1: never to love.
- 4:19:05Speaker 2: It is night.
- 4:19:07Speaker 1: Now do all gushing springs raise their voices? And my
- 4:19:12Speaker 1: soul too is a gushing spring. Tis night now only
- 4:19:18Speaker 1: do all lovers burst into song? And my soul too
- 4:19:23Speaker 1: is the song of a lover. Something unquenched and unquenchable
- 4:19:28Speaker 1: is within me that would raise its voice. A craving
- 4:19:33Speaker 1: for love is within me, which itself speaketh the language
- 4:19:37Speaker 1: of love.
- 4:19:39Speaker 2: Light?
- 4:19:39Speaker 1: Am I would that I were night? But this is
- 4:19:43Speaker 1: my loneliness, that I am brigot with light? Alas, why
- 4:19:50Speaker 1: am I not dark? And like under the night? How
- 4:19:55Speaker 1: joyfully would I then suck the breasts of light? And
- 4:20:00Speaker 1: even you would I bless ye twinkling starlets and glow
- 4:20:04Speaker 1: worms on high, and be blest in the gifts of
- 4:20:08Speaker 1: your light. But in mine own light? Do I live
- 4:20:13Speaker 1: ever back into myself? Do I drink the flames I
- 4:20:17Speaker 1: send forth? I know not the happiness of the hand
- 4:20:22Speaker 1: stretched forth to grasp and oft? Have I dreamt that
- 4:20:26Speaker 1: stealing must be more blessed than taking?
- 4:20:31Speaker 2: Wretched?
- 4:20:31Speaker 1: Am I that my hand may never rest from giving?
- 4:20:37Speaker 1: An envious fate is mine? That I see expectant eyes
- 4:20:42Speaker 1: and knights made bright with longing. Oh, the wretchedness of
- 4:20:47Speaker 1: all them that give, Oh the clouds that cover the
- 4:20:51Speaker 1: face of my sun, that craving for desire, that burning hunger.
- 4:20:57Speaker 1: At the end of the feast, they take what I
- 4:21:01Speaker 1: give them, But do I touch their soul? A gulf
- 4:21:06Speaker 1: is there TwixT giving and taking, And the smallest gulf
- 4:21:11Speaker 1: is the last to be bridged. An appetite is borne
- 4:21:16Speaker 1: from out my beauty.
- 4:21:18Speaker 2: Would that I.
- 4:21:19Speaker 1: Might do harm to them that I fill with light?
- 4:21:23Speaker 1: Would that I might rob them of the gifts I
- 4:21:26Speaker 1: have given? Thus do I thirst for wickedness to withdraw
- 4:21:32Speaker 1: my hand, when their hand is already stretched forth? Like
- 4:21:36Speaker 1: the water fall that waivers, wavers even in its fall.
- 4:21:41Speaker 1: Thus do I thirst for wickedness for such vengeance? Doth
- 4:21:46Speaker 1: my fullness yearn to such tricks? Doth my loneliness give birth?
- 4:21:53Speaker 1: My joy in giving died with the deed, but its
- 4:21:57Speaker 1: very fullness. Did my virtue grow weary of itself. He
- 4:22:02Speaker 1: who giveth risketh to lose his shame. He that is
- 4:22:07Speaker 1: ever distributing, groweth callous in hand and heart. Therefrom My
- 4:22:14Speaker 1: eyes no longer melt into tears at the sight of
- 4:22:18Speaker 1: the suppli and shame. My hand hath become too hard
- 4:22:23Speaker 1: to feel the quivering of laden hands. Whither have ye
- 4:22:28Speaker 1: fled the tears of mine eyes and the bloom of
- 4:22:32Speaker 1: my heart? Oh, the solitude of all givers, O the
- 4:22:37Speaker 1: silence of all beacons. Many are the suns that circle
- 4:22:42Speaker 1: in barren space to all that is dark? Do they
- 4:22:46Speaker 1: speak with their light to me alone?
- 4:22:49Speaker 2: Are they silent?
- 4:22:51Speaker 1: Alas this is the hatred of light. For that which
- 4:22:55Speaker 1: shineth pitiless, it runneth its course, unfair in its inmost heart,
- 4:23:04Speaker 1: to that which shineth cold towards suns. Thus doth every
- 4:23:09Speaker 1: sun go its way like a tempest? Do the suns
- 4:23:14Speaker 1: fly over their course? For such is their way, their
- 4:23:19Speaker 1: own unswerving will do they follow? That is their coldness?
- 4:23:24Speaker 1: Alas it is ye alone, ye creatures of gloom, Ye
- 4:23:29Speaker 1: spirits of the night, that take your warmth from that
- 4:23:33Speaker 1: which shineth. Ye alone, suck your milk and comfort from
- 4:23:38Speaker 1: the udders of light. Alas about me there is ice.
- 4:23:43Speaker 1: My hand burneth itself against ice. Alas within me is
- 4:23:50Speaker 1: a thirst that thirsteth for your thirst. It is night
- 4:23:56Speaker 1: woe to me that I must needs be light and
- 4:24:00Speaker 1: thirst after darkness and loneliness.
- 4:24:04Speaker 2: It is night now, doth my.
- 4:24:06Speaker 1: Longing burst forth like a spring for speech? Do I long?
- 4:24:12Speaker 1: It is night now? Do all gushing springs raise their voices?
- 4:24:18Speaker 1: And my soul too is a gushing spring. It is
- 4:24:22Speaker 1: night now only to all lovers burst into song, And
- 4:24:28Speaker 1: my soul too is the song of a lover. Eight
- 4:24:36Speaker 1: such things have never been written, never been felt, never
- 4:24:40Speaker 1: been suffered. Only a god, only Dionysius suffers in this way.
- 4:24:47Speaker 1: The reply to such a diaphragm on the sound solitude
- 4:24:50Speaker 1: in light would be Ariadne, who knows, but I, who
- 4:24:56Speaker 1: Ariadne is. To all such riddles, no one heretofore, had
- 4:25:03Speaker 1: ever found an answer. I doubt even whether any one
- 4:25:08Speaker 1: had ever seen a riddle. Here one day, Zarathustra severely
- 4:25:14Speaker 1: determines his life task, and it is also mine. Let
- 4:25:20Speaker 1: no one misunderstand its meaning. It is a yea saying
- 4:25:25Speaker 1: to the point of justifying, to the point of redeeming,
- 4:25:28Speaker 1: even all that is past. I walk among men, as
- 4:25:34Speaker 1: among fragments of the future, of that future which I see,
- 4:25:40Speaker 1: And all my creativeness and effort is but this that
- 4:25:45Speaker 1: I may be able to think and recast All these
- 4:25:48Speaker 1: fragments and riddles and dismal accidents into one piece. And
- 4:25:54Speaker 1: how could I bear to be a man if man
- 4:25:58Speaker 1: were not also a poet, a riddle reader, and a
- 4:26:02Speaker 1: redeemer of chance, to redeem all the past and transform
- 4:26:06Speaker 1: every it was into Thus would I have it, that
- 4:26:12Speaker 1: alone would be my salvation. In another passage, he defines,
- 4:26:18Speaker 1: as strictly as possible, what to him alone man can be,
- 4:26:24Speaker 1: not a subject for love, nor yet for pity. Zarathustra
- 4:26:31Speaker 1: became muster even of his loathing of man. Man is
- 4:26:35Speaker 1: to him a thing, unshaped, raw material, an ugly stone
- 4:26:41Speaker 1: that needs a sculptor's chisel, no longer to will, no
- 4:26:47Speaker 1: longer to value, no longer to create. Oh, that this
- 4:26:52Speaker 1: great weariness may never be mine. Even in the lust
- 4:26:58Speaker 1: of knowledge, I feel only the joy of my will
- 4:27:02Speaker 1: to beget and to grow. And if there be innocence
- 4:27:06Speaker 1: in my knowledge, it is because my procreative will is
- 4:27:11Speaker 1: in it. Away from God and gods. To this will
- 4:27:14Speaker 1: allure me. What would there be to create if there
- 4:27:19Speaker 1: were gods? But to man? Doth it ever drive me anew?
- 4:27:25Speaker 1: My burning creative will thus driveth it the hammer to
- 4:27:31Speaker 1: the stone. Alas ye men within the stone that sleepeth
- 4:27:36Speaker 1: an image for me, the image of all my dreams,
- 4:27:40Speaker 1: alas that it should have to sleep in the hardest
- 4:27:44Speaker 1: and ugliest stone. Now rageth my hammer ruthlessly against its prism.
- 4:27:51Speaker 1: From the stone, the fragments fly. What's that to me?
- 4:27:56Speaker 1: I will finish it? For a shadow came unto me,
- 4:28:00Speaker 1: the stillest and lightest thing on earth once came unto me.
- 4:28:04Speaker 1: The beauty of the superman came unto me as a shadow. Alas,
- 4:28:09Speaker 1: my brethren, what are the gods to me? Now? Let
- 4:28:16Speaker 1: me call attention to one last point of view. The
- 4:28:20Speaker 1: line in italics is my pretext for this remark narrator's note.
- 4:28:28Speaker 1: The line reads narrageth my hammer ruthlessly against its prison
- 4:28:34Speaker 1: and narrator's note. A Deunesian life task needs the hardness
- 4:28:40Speaker 1: of the hammer, and one of its first essentials is,
- 4:28:44Speaker 1: without doubt, the joy even of destruction, the command harden yourselves,
- 4:28:52Speaker 1: and the deep conviction that all creators are hard is
- 4:28:57Speaker 1: the really distinctive sign of a Unesian nature, and of
- 4:29:07Speaker 1: why I write such excellent books. Part two, Why I
- 4:29:12Speaker 1: write such excellent books? Part three Beyond Good and Evil
- 4:29:24Speaker 1: The prelude to a philosophy of the future one. My
- 4:29:30Speaker 1: work for the years that followed was prescribed as distinctly
- 4:29:35Speaker 1: as possible. Now that the yea saying part of my
- 4:29:40Speaker 1: life task was accomplished, there came the turn of the
- 4:29:44Speaker 1: negative portion, both in word and deed, the transvaluation of
- 4:29:50Speaker 1: all values that had existed hitherto the Great War, the
- 4:29:55Speaker 1: conjuring up of the day when the fatal outcome of
- 4:29:58Speaker 1: the struggle would be decided. Meanwhile, I had slowly to
- 4:30:04Speaker 1: look about me for my peers, for those who, out
- 4:30:08Speaker 1: of strength, would proper me a helping hand in my
- 4:30:12Speaker 1: work of destruction. From that time onward, all my writings
- 4:30:18Speaker 1: are so much bait. Maybe I understand as much about
- 4:30:23Speaker 1: fishing as most people. If nothing was caught, it was
- 4:30:28Speaker 1: not I who was at fault. There were no fish
- 4:30:32Speaker 1: to come and bite.
- 4:30:38Speaker 2: Two.
- 4:30:40Speaker 1: In all its essential points, this book eighteen eighty six
- 4:30:45Speaker 1: is a criticism of modernity, embracing the modern sciences, arts,
- 4:30:52Speaker 1: even politics, together with certain indications as to a type
- 4:30:57Speaker 1: which would be the reverse of modern man, or as
- 4:31:00Speaker 1: little like him as possible, a noble and yea saying type.
- 4:31:06Speaker 1: In this last respect, the book is a school for
- 4:31:10Speaker 1: gentlemen the term gentlemen being understood here in a much
- 4:31:14Speaker 1: more spiritual and radical sense than it has implied Hitherto
- 4:31:20Speaker 1: all those things of which the age is proud, as,
- 4:31:24Speaker 1: for instance, far famed objectivity, sympathy with all that suffers,
- 4:31:31Speaker 1: the historical sense, with its subjection to foreign tastes, with
- 4:31:36Speaker 1: its lying in the dust before Betti Fey, and the
- 4:31:41Speaker 1: rage for science, are shown to be the contradiction of
- 4:31:45Speaker 1: the type recommended, and are regarded as almost ill bred.
- 4:31:53Speaker 1: If you remember that this book follows upon Zarathustra, you
- 4:31:57Speaker 1: may possibly guess to what's says of diet it owes
- 4:32:01Speaker 1: its life. The eye, which, owing to tremendous constraint, has
- 4:32:08Speaker 1: become accustomed to see at a great distance. Zarathustra is
- 4:32:13Speaker 1: even more far sighted than the Czar. Is here forced
- 4:32:18Speaker 1: to focus sharply that which is close at hand the
- 4:32:21Speaker 1: present time, the things that lie about him. In all
- 4:32:26Speaker 1: the aphorisms, and more particularly in the form of this book,
- 4:32:31Speaker 1: the reader will find the same voluntary turning away from
- 4:32:35Speaker 1: those instincts which made Zarathustra a possible feat. Refinement in form,
- 4:32:42Speaker 1: in aspiration and in the art of keeping silent are
- 4:32:46Speaker 1: more or less obvious qualities. Psychology is handled with deliberate
- 4:32:51Speaker 1: hardness and cruelty. The whole book does not contain one
- 4:32:57Speaker 1: single good natured word.
- 4:33:00Speaker 2: This sort of thing.
- 4:33:01Speaker 1: Refreshes a man who can guess the kind of recreation
- 4:33:05Speaker 1: that is necessary after such an expenditure of goodness as
- 4:33:09Speaker 1: is to be found in Zarathustra. From a theological standpoint,
- 4:33:15Speaker 1: now pay ye heed, for it is but on rare
- 4:33:18Speaker 1: occasions that I speak as a theologian. It was God
- 4:33:23Speaker 1: himself who, at the end of his great work, coiled
- 4:33:26Speaker 1: himself up in the form of a serpent at the
- 4:33:29Speaker 1: foot of the tree of Knowledge. It was thus that
- 4:33:33Speaker 1: he recovered from being a god. He had made everything
- 4:33:37Speaker 1: too beautiful. The devil is simply God's moment of idleness
- 4:33:42Speaker 1: on that seventh day. The Genealogy of Morals a polemic.
- 4:33:52Speaker 1: The three essays which constitute this genealogy are as regards expression, aspiration,
- 4:33:59Speaker 1: and the art of the unexpected, perhaps the most curious
- 4:34:03Speaker 1: things that have ever been written. Dionysus, as you know,
- 4:34:08Speaker 1: is also the god of darkness. In each case, the
- 4:34:12Speaker 1: beginning is calculated to mystify. It is cool, scientific, even ironical,
- 4:34:19Speaker 1: intentionally thrust to the fore intentionally reticent. Gradually less calmness prevails.
- 4:34:28Speaker 1: Here and there a flash of lightning defines the horizon.
- 4:34:33Speaker 1: Exceedingly unpleasant truths break upon your ears from out remote
- 4:34:39Speaker 1: distances with a dull, rumbling sound, until very soon a
- 4:34:44Speaker 1: fist tempo is attained, in which everything presses forwards at
- 4:34:48Speaker 1: a terrible.
- 4:34:49Speaker 2: Degree of tension.
- 4:34:51Speaker 1: At the end, in each case, amid fearful thunderclapse, a
- 4:34:56Speaker 1: new truth shines out between thick clouds. The truth of
- 4:35:02Speaker 1: the first essay is the psychology of Christianity, the birth
- 4:35:07Speaker 1: of Christianity out of the spirit of resentment, not as
- 4:35:11Speaker 1: is supposed, out of the spirit in all its essentials,
- 4:35:17Speaker 1: a counter movement, the great insurrection against the dominion of
- 4:35:21Speaker 1: noble values. The second essay contains the psychology of conscience.
- 4:35:27Speaker 1: This is not, as you may believe, the voice of
- 4:35:31Speaker 1: God in man. It is the instinct of cruelty, which
- 4:35:36Speaker 1: turns inwards once it is unable to discharge itself outwardly.
- 4:35:41Speaker 1: Cruelty is here exposed for the first time as one
- 4:35:45Speaker 1: of the oldest and most indispensable elements in a foundation
- 4:35:49Speaker 1: of culture. The third essay replies to the question as
- 4:35:55Speaker 1: to the origin of the formidable power of the essetic
- 4:35:58Speaker 1: ideal of the priest ideal, despite the fact that this
- 4:36:04Speaker 1: ideal is essentially detrimental, that it is a will to
- 4:36:08Speaker 1: nonentity and to decadence. Reply, it flourished not because God
- 4:36:16Speaker 1: was active behind the priests, as is generally believed, but
- 4:36:22Speaker 1: because it was a fote de meye from the fact
- 4:36:26Speaker 1: that hitherto it has been the only ideal and has
- 4:36:30Speaker 1: had no competitors. For man prefers to aspire to nonentity
- 4:36:37Speaker 1: than not to aspire at all. But above all, until
- 4:36:42Speaker 1: the time of Zarathustra, there was no such thing as
- 4:36:46Speaker 1: a counter ideal. You have understood my meaning. Three decisive
- 4:36:52Speaker 1: overtures on the part of a psychologist to a transvaluation
- 4:36:57Speaker 1: of all values. This book contains the first psychology of
- 4:37:02Speaker 1: the priest, the Twilight of the Idols, How to Philosophize
- 4:37:11Speaker 1: with the Hammer One. This work, which covers scarcely one
- 4:37:18Speaker 1: hundred and fifty pages, with its cheerful and faithful tone
- 4:37:23Speaker 1: like a laughing demon, and the production of which occupied
- 4:37:27Speaker 1: so few days that I hesitated to give their number,
- 4:37:31Speaker 1: is altogether an exception among books. There is no work
- 4:37:35Speaker 1: more rich in substance more independent, more upsetting, more wicked.
- 4:37:42Speaker 1: If anyone should desire to obtain a rapid sketch of
- 4:37:45Speaker 1: our everything before my time was standing on its head,
- 4:37:49Speaker 1: he should begin reading me. In this book, that which
- 4:37:53Speaker 1: is called idols on the title page is simply the
- 4:37:57Speaker 1: old truth that has been believed in his the two.
- 4:38:01Speaker 1: In plain English, the twilight of the idols means that
- 4:38:05Speaker 1: the old truth is on its last legs.
- 4:38:09Speaker 2: Two.
- 4:38:11Speaker 1: There is no reality, no ideality which has not been
- 4:38:16Speaker 1: touched in this book. Touched. What a cautious euphemism, not
- 4:38:22Speaker 1: only the eternal idols, but also the youngest, that is
- 4:38:26Speaker 1: to say, the most senile modern ideas. For instance, a
- 4:38:31Speaker 1: strong wind blows between the trees and in all directions
- 4:38:35Speaker 1: for the fruit the truths. There is a waste of
- 4:38:40Speaker 1: an all too rich autumn in this book. You trip
- 4:38:43Speaker 1: over truths, you even crush some to death. There are
- 4:38:47Speaker 1: too many of them. Those things that you can grasp, however,
- 4:38:52Speaker 1: are quite unquestionable. There are irrevocable decrees. I alone have
- 4:39:00Speaker 1: the criterion of truths in my possession. I alone can decide.
- 4:39:07Speaker 1: It would seem as if a second consciousness had grown
- 4:39:11Speaker 1: up in me, as if the life will in me
- 4:39:15Speaker 1: have thrown a light upon the downward path along which
- 4:39:18Speaker 1: it has been running throughout the ages. The downward path
- 4:39:24Speaker 1: hitherto this has been called the road to truth. All
- 4:39:28Speaker 1: obscure impulse, darkness and dismay is at an end. The
- 4:39:34Speaker 1: good man was precisely he who was least aware of
- 4:39:38Speaker 1: the proper way. Translator's footnote a witty reference to Gerta's
- 4:39:44Speaker 1: well known passage in the Prolog to Faust. A good man,
- 4:39:48Speaker 1: though in darkness and dismay, may still be conscious of
- 4:39:52Speaker 1: the proper way. The words are spoken by the Lord
- 4:39:56Speaker 1: and a translator's note, and speaking in all earnestness. No
- 4:40:03Speaker 1: one before me knew the proper way, the way upwards.
- 4:40:08Speaker 1: Only after my time could men once more find hope life,
- 4:40:13Speaker 1: tasks and roads mapped out that lead to culture. I
- 4:40:18Speaker 1: am the joyful harboringer of this culture. On this account alone,
- 4:40:24Speaker 1: I am also a fatality. Three immediately after the completion
- 4:40:33Speaker 1: of the above named work, and without letting even one
- 4:40:37Speaker 1: day go by, I tackled the formidable task of the
- 4:40:41Speaker 1: transvaluation with the supreme feeling of pride which nothing could
- 4:40:45Speaker 1: equal and certain at each moment of my immortality, I
- 4:40:51Speaker 1: cut sign after sign upon tablets of brass with the
- 4:40:54Speaker 1: sureness of fate. The preface came into being on the
- 4:40:58Speaker 1: third of September eighteen eighty eight, when, after having written
- 4:41:04Speaker 1: it down, I went out into the open. That morning
- 4:41:08Speaker 1: I was greeted by the most beautiful day I had
- 4:41:11Speaker 1: ever seen in the upper Egadine, clear, glowing with color
- 4:41:17Speaker 1: and presenting all the contrasts and all the intermediary gradations
- 4:41:22Speaker 1: between ice and the south. I left sils Maria only
- 4:41:28Speaker 1: on the twentieth of September. I had been forced to
- 4:41:32Speaker 1: delay my departure owing to floods, and I was very
- 4:41:36Speaker 1: soon and for some days the only visitor in this
- 4:41:40Speaker 1: wonderful spot on which by gratitude bestows the gift of
- 4:41:45Speaker 1: an immortal name. After a journey that was full of
- 4:41:50Speaker 1: incidents and not without danger to life, as for instance
- 4:41:55Speaker 1: at Como, which was flooded when I reached it in
- 4:41:58Speaker 1: the dead of night, I got to Turin on the
- 4:42:02Speaker 1: afternoon of the twenty first. Turin is the only suitable
- 4:42:07Speaker 1: place for me, and it shall be my home. Henceforward,
- 4:42:12Speaker 1: I took the same lodgings as I had occupied in
- 4:42:15Speaker 1: the spring six one one one via Carlo Alberto, opposite
- 4:42:22Speaker 1: the mighty Palazzo Carignano, in which Vittorio Emmanuel was born,
- 4:42:28Speaker 1: And I had a view of the Piazzo Carlo Alberto
- 4:42:32Speaker 1: and above it across to the hills. Without hesitating or
- 4:42:37Speaker 1: allowing myself to be disturbed for a single moment, I
- 4:42:40Speaker 1: returned to my work, only the last quarter of which
- 4:42:44Speaker 1: had still to be written. On the thirtieth of September.
- 4:42:49Speaker 1: Tremendous triumph the seventh day, the leisure of a God
- 4:42:53Speaker 1: on the banks of the po translator's footnote. There is
- 4:42:59Speaker 1: a wonderful promenade along the banks of the Poe, for
- 4:43:02Speaker 1: which Turin is famous, and of which Nietzsche was particularly fond,
- 4:43:08Speaker 1: and translator's note. On the same day I wrote the
- 4:43:13Speaker 1: preface to The Twilight of the Idols, the correction of
- 4:43:17Speaker 1: the proofs of which provided me with recreation during the
- 4:43:21Speaker 1: month of September. Never in my life have I experienced
- 4:43:26Speaker 1: such an autumn, nor had I ever imagined that such
- 4:43:31Speaker 1: things were possible on earth. A Claude Laurin extended to infinity,
- 4:43:38Speaker 1: each day equal to the last in its wild perfection.
- 4:43:45Speaker 1: The case of Wagner a musician's problem one in order
- 4:43:52Speaker 1: to do justice to this essay, A man ought to
- 4:43:55Speaker 1: suffer from the fate of music as from an open wound.
- 4:44:01Speaker 1: From what do I suffer when I suffer from the
- 4:44:04Speaker 1: fate of music? From the fact that music has lost
- 4:44:08Speaker 1: its world, transfiguring Ya saying character that it is decadent
- 4:44:14Speaker 1: music and no longer the flute of Dionysus. Supposing, however,
- 4:44:21Speaker 1: that the fate of music be as dear to man
- 4:44:24Speaker 1: as his own life, because joy and suffering are alike
- 4:44:28Speaker 1: bound up with it, then he will find this pamphlet
- 4:44:31Speaker 1: comparatively mild and full of consideration, to be cheerful in
- 4:44:38Speaker 1: such circumstances, and laugh good naturedly with the others at oneself.
- 4:44:45Speaker 1: Credendo decii severroon translator's note, the motto of the case
- 4:44:52Speaker 1: of Wagner. End of translator's note. When the verum deceree
- 4:44:58Speaker 1: will justify every sort of hardness is humanity itself? Who
- 4:45:05Speaker 1: doubts that I, old artillery man that I am, would
- 4:45:09Speaker 1: be able if I liked to point my heavy guns
- 4:45:12Speaker 1: at Wagner? Everything decisive in this question, I kept to myself.
- 4:45:19Speaker 1: I have loved Wagner. After all, an attack upon a
- 4:45:24Speaker 1: more than usually subtle, unknown person whom another would not
- 4:45:29Speaker 1: have divined so easily, lies in the meaning and path
- 4:45:33Speaker 1: of my life.
- 4:45:34Speaker 2: Task.
- 4:45:36Speaker 1: Oh, I have still quite a number of other unknown
- 4:45:39Speaker 1: persons to unmask. Besides a cagliostro of music. Above all,
- 4:45:46Speaker 1: I have to direct an attack against the German people, who,
- 4:45:51Speaker 1: in matters of the spirit, grow every day more indolent,
- 4:45:55Speaker 1: poorer in instincts, and more honest, who, with an appetite
- 4:46:02Speaker 1: for which they are to be envied, continue to diet
- 4:46:05Speaker 1: themselves on contradictions and gulp down faith in company with science.
- 4:46:13Speaker 1: Christian love together with antisemitism and the will to power
- 4:46:18Speaker 1: to the empire, dished up with the Gospel of the humble,
- 4:46:23Speaker 1: without showing the slightest signs of indigestion. Fancy this absence
- 4:46:30Speaker 1: of party feeling in the presence of opposites. Fancy this
- 4:46:34Speaker 1: gastric neutrality and disinterestedness. Behold this sense of justice in
- 4:46:41Speaker 1: the German palate, which can grant equal rights to all,
- 4:46:46Speaker 1: which finds everything tasteful without a shadow of doubt. The
- 4:46:51Speaker 1: Germans are idealists. When I was last in Germany, I
- 4:46:57Speaker 1: found German tastes striving to grant Wagner and the trumpeter
- 4:47:01Speaker 1: of Sakkingen Equal Rights translator's footnote, an opera by Nessler
- 4:47:08Speaker 1: which was all a rage in Germany twenty years ago
- 4:47:12Speaker 1: and translator's note, while I witnessed the attempts of the
- 4:47:16Speaker 1: people of Leipzig to do honor to one of the
- 4:47:19Speaker 1: most genuine and most German of musicians. Using German here
- 4:47:25Speaker 1: in the old sense of the word, a man who
- 4:47:28Speaker 1: is no mere German of the Empire, the master Heinrich Schultz,
- 4:47:33Speaker 1: by founding a List's Society, the object of which was
- 4:47:38Speaker 1: to cultivate and spread artful listige church music translator's footnote. Unfortunately,
- 4:47:47Speaker 1: it is impossible to render this play on the words
- 4:47:50Speaker 1: in English and translator's note without a shadow of doubt.
- 4:47:57Speaker 1: The Germans are idealists.
- 4:48:05Speaker 2: Two.
- 4:48:07Speaker 1: But here nothing shall stop me from being rude and
- 4:48:12Speaker 1: from telling the Germans one or two unpleasant home truths.
- 4:48:17Speaker 1: Who else would do it if I did not? I
- 4:48:21Speaker 1: refer to their laxity in matters historical. Not only have
- 4:48:25Speaker 1: the Germans entirely lost the breath of vision which enables
- 4:48:29Speaker 1: one to grasp the course of culture and the values
- 4:48:32Speaker 1: of culture. Not only are they one and all political
- 4:48:38Speaker 1: or church puppets. But they have also actually put a
- 4:48:44Speaker 1: ban upon this very breath of vision. A man must
- 4:48:48Speaker 1: first and foremist be German. He must belong to the race.
- 4:48:55Speaker 1: Then only can he pass judgment upon all values and
- 4:49:00Speaker 1: lack of values in history. Then only can he establish
- 4:49:04Speaker 1: them to be German is in itself an argument Germany. Germany,
- 4:49:10Speaker 1: above all is a principle. Translators note the German national
- 4:49:16Speaker 1: song Deutschland Deutschland Uberalus and translators note the Germans stand
- 4:49:24Speaker 1: for the moral order of the universe in history. Compared
- 4:49:28Speaker 1: with the Roman Empire, they are the upholders of freedom.
- 4:49:33Speaker 1: Compared with the eighteenth century, they are the restorers of morality,
- 4:49:37Speaker 1: of the categorical imperative. There is such a thing as
- 4:49:41Speaker 1: the writing of history according to the lights of Imperial Germany.
- 4:49:47Speaker 1: There is i fear anti Semitic history. There is also
- 4:49:51Speaker 1: history written with an eye to the court. And her
- 4:49:55Speaker 1: von Tretsk is not ashamed of himself. Recently, an idiotic
- 4:50:01Speaker 1: opinion in Historicus, an observation of Fisher, the Swabian aesthete
- 4:50:09Speaker 1: since happily deceased, made the round of the German newspapers
- 4:50:14Speaker 1: as a truth to which every German must assent. The
- 4:50:19Speaker 1: observation was this, the Renaissance and the Reformation only together
- 4:50:26Speaker 1: constitute a whole, the esthetic rebirth and the moral rebirth.
- 4:50:33Speaker 1: When I listen to such things, I lose all patients,
- 4:50:36Speaker 1: and I feel inclined. I even feel it's my duty
- 4:50:41Speaker 1: to tell the Germans, for once in a way, all
- 4:50:45Speaker 1: that they have on their conscience, every great crime against
- 4:50:50Speaker 1: culture for the last four centuries, lies on their conscience,
- 4:50:56Speaker 1: and always for the same reason, always owing to their
- 4:51:00Speaker 1: bottomless cowardice in the face of reality, which is also
- 4:51:05Speaker 1: cowardice in the face of truth, always owing to the
- 4:51:09Speaker 1: love of falsehood, which has become almost instinctive in them.
- 4:51:14Speaker 1: In short, idealism, it was the Germans who caused Europe
- 4:51:19Speaker 1: to lose the fruits, the whole meaning of her last
- 4:51:22Speaker 1: period of greatness, the period of the Renaissance, at a
- 4:51:26Speaker 1: moment when a higher order of values, values that were noble,
- 4:51:31Speaker 1: that said yay to life and that guaranteed of future,
- 4:51:35Speaker 1: had succeeded in triumphing over the opposite values, the values
- 4:51:40Speaker 1: of degeneration. In the very seed of Christianity itself and
- 4:51:45Speaker 1: even in the hearts of those sitting there, Luther that
- 4:51:49Speaker 1: cursed monk not only restored the Church, but what was
- 4:51:54Speaker 1: a thousand times worse, restored Christianity, and at a time
- 4:51:59Speaker 1: too when it lay defeated Christianity, the denial of the
- 4:52:04Speaker 1: will to live exalted to a religion. Luther was an
- 4:52:10Speaker 1: impossible monk who, thanks to his own impossibility, attacked the
- 4:52:16Speaker 1: Church and in doing so restored it. Catholics would be
- 4:52:20Speaker 1: perfectly justified in celebrating feasts in honour of Luther and
- 4:52:25Speaker 1: in producing festival plays in his honour. Translator's note. Ever
- 4:52:31Speaker 1: since the year sixteen seventeen such plays have been produced
- 4:52:34Speaker 1: by the Protestants of Germany, and Translator's note, Luther and
- 4:52:42Speaker 1: the Rebirth of morality may all psychology go to the
- 4:52:46Speaker 1: devil without a shadow of a doubt. The Germans are idealists.
- 4:52:53Speaker 1: On two occasions, when at the cost of enormous courage
- 4:52:57Speaker 1: and self control and upright unequivocal and perfectly scientific attitude
- 4:53:03Speaker 1: of mind had been attained, the Germans were able to
- 4:53:06Speaker 1: discover backstairs leading down to the old ideal again, compromises
- 4:53:12Speaker 1: between truth and the ideal, and in short, formulae for
- 4:53:17Speaker 1: the right to reject science and to perpetrate falsehoods Leibnitz
- 4:53:23Speaker 1: and Kan't. These two great breaks upon the intellectual honesty
- 4:53:29Speaker 1: of Europe. Finally, at a moment when there appeared, on
- 4:53:34Speaker 1: the bridge that spanned two centuries of decadence, a superior
- 4:53:38Speaker 1: force of genius and will, which was strong enough to
- 4:53:41Speaker 1: consolidate Europe and to convert it into a political and
- 4:53:46Speaker 1: economic unit with the object of ruling the world. The Germans,
- 4:53:51Speaker 1: with their wars of independence, robbed Europe of the significance,
- 4:53:57Speaker 1: the marvelous significance of Napollian's life, and in doing so
- 4:54:02Speaker 1: they laid on their conscience everything that followed, everything that
- 4:54:07Speaker 1: exists today, this sickliness and want of reason, which is
- 4:54:12Speaker 1: most opposed to culture, and which is called nationalism, This
- 4:54:17Speaker 1: nevosa nacier now from which Europe is suffering acutely, this
- 4:54:23Speaker 1: eternal subdivision of Europe into petty states with politics on
- 4:54:28Speaker 1: a municipal scale. They have robbed Europe itself of its significance,
- 4:54:33Speaker 1: of its reason, and have stuffed it into a cul
- 4:54:36Speaker 1: de sac. Is there anyone except me who knows the
- 4:54:41Speaker 1: way out of this cul de sac? Does anyone except
- 4:54:45Speaker 1: me know of an aspiration which would be great enough
- 4:54:49Speaker 1: to bind the peoples of Europe once more together. Three,
- 4:54:57Speaker 1: And after all, why should I not express my suspicions
- 4:55:03Speaker 1: in my case too? The Germans will attempt to make
- 4:55:07Speaker 1: a great fate give birth merely to a mouse. Up
- 4:55:11Speaker 1: to the present they have compromised themselves with me. I
- 4:55:16Speaker 1: doubt whether the future will improve them alas how happy
- 4:55:21Speaker 1: I should be to prove a false prophet.
- 4:55:23Speaker 2: In this matter.
- 4:55:26Speaker 1: My natural readers and listeners are already Russians, Scandinavians and Frenchmen.
- 4:55:33Speaker 1: Will they always be the same? In the history of knowledge,
- 4:55:38Speaker 1: Germans are represented only by doubtful names. They have been
- 4:55:44Speaker 1: able to produce only unconscious swindlers. This word applies to Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel,
- 4:55:55Speaker 1: and Schleilemacher just as well as to cant All. They
- 4:56:02Speaker 1: are all merely schleiller Machers. A translator's footnote, schleier Macher
- 4:56:07Speaker 1: literally means a weaver or maker of veils and translator's note,
- 4:56:14Speaker 1: the Germans must not have the honor of seeing the
- 4:56:17Speaker 1: first upright intellect in the history of intellects, that intellect
- 4:56:23Speaker 1: in which truth ultimately got the better of the fraud
- 4:56:27Speaker 1: of four thousand years reckoned as one with the German intellect.
- 4:56:33Speaker 1: German intellect is my foul air. I breathe with difficulty
- 4:56:39Speaker 1: in the neighborhood of this psychological uncleanliness that has now
- 4:56:44Speaker 1: become instinctive, an uncleanliness which in every word an expression
- 4:56:50Speaker 1: betrays a German. They have never undergone a seventeenth century
- 4:56:55Speaker 1: of hard self examination, as the French have a laroche
- 4:57:01Speaker 1: ful coal a daycar are a thousand times more upright
- 4:57:06Speaker 1: than the very first among Germans. The latter have not
- 4:57:10Speaker 1: yet had any psychologists. But psychology is almost the standard
- 4:57:16Speaker 1: of measurement for the cleanliness or uncleanliness of a race.
- 4:57:21Speaker 1: For if a man is not even clean, how can
- 4:57:24Speaker 1: he be deep? The Germans are like women. You can
- 4:57:29Speaker 1: scarcely ever fathom their depths. They haven't any, and that's.
- 4:57:34Speaker 2: The end of it.
- 4:57:36Speaker 1: Thus they cannot even be called shallow. That which is
- 4:57:39Speaker 1: called deep in Germany is precisely this instinctive uncleanliness towards
- 4:57:45Speaker 1: one's self, of which I have just spoken. People refuse
- 4:57:50Speaker 1: to be clear in regards to their own natures. Might
- 4:57:54Speaker 1: I be allowed, perhaps to suggest the word German as
- 4:57:59Speaker 1: an international epithet denoting this psychological depravity at the moment
- 4:58:06Speaker 1: of writing.
- 4:58:06Speaker 2: For instance, the.
- 4:58:08Speaker 1: German emperor is declaring it to be his Christian duty
- 4:58:12Speaker 1: to liberate the slaves in Africa. Among US Europeans, then
- 4:58:17Speaker 1: this will recalled simply German. Have the Germans ever produced
- 4:58:22Speaker 1: even a book that had depth? They are lacking in
- 4:58:27Speaker 1: the mere idea of what constitutes a book.
- 4:58:31Speaker 3: I have known.
- 4:58:32Speaker 1: Scholars who thought that Kant was deep at the court
- 4:58:36Speaker 1: of Prussia. I fear that her von Tresk is regarded
- 4:58:40Speaker 1: as deep. And when I happen to praise Sandhel as
- 4:58:45Speaker 1: a deep psychologist, I have often been compelled in the
- 4:58:49Speaker 1: company of German university professors to spell his name allowed
- 4:58:56Speaker 1: four and why should I not proceed to the end?
- 4:59:02Speaker 1: I am fond of clearing the air. It is even
- 4:59:05Speaker 1: part of my ambition to be considered as essentially a
- 4:59:09Speaker 1: despiser of Germans. I expressed my suspicions of the German
- 4:59:14Speaker 1: character even at the age of six and twenty see
- 4:59:19Speaker 1: Thoughts out of Season Volume two, pages one six four
- 4:59:23Speaker 1: to one six five. To my mind, the Germans are
- 4:59:28Speaker 1: impossible when I try to think of the kind of
- 4:59:32Speaker 1: man who is opposed to me in all my instincts,
- 4:59:36Speaker 1: my mental image takes the form of a German. The
- 4:59:40Speaker 1: first thing I ask myself when I begin analyzing a
- 4:59:43Speaker 1: man is whether he has a feeling for distance in him,
- 4:59:49Speaker 1: whether he sees rank, gradation and order everywhere between man
- 4:59:54Speaker 1: and man, whether he makes distinctions. For this is what
- 5:00:00Speaker 1: constitutes a gentleman. Otherwise he belongs hopelessly to that open hearted,
- 5:00:08Speaker 1: open minded alas an always very good natured species lacanaye.
- 5:00:15Speaker 1: But the Germans are canaye, alas they are so good natured.
- 5:00:21Speaker 1: A man lowers himself by frequenting the society of Germans.
- 5:00:26Speaker 1: The German places everyone on an equal footing. With the
- 5:00:31Speaker 1: exception of my intercourse with one or two artists, and
- 5:00:35Speaker 1: above all with Richard Wagner, I cannot say that I
- 5:00:39Speaker 1: have spent one pleasant hour with Germans. Suppose for one
- 5:00:44Speaker 1: moment that the profoundest spirit of all ages were to
- 5:00:49Speaker 1: appear among Germans. Then one of the saviors of the
- 5:00:53Speaker 1: capital would be sure to arise and declare that his
- 5:00:57Speaker 1: own ugly soul was just as great. I can no
- 5:01:01Speaker 1: longer abide this race, with which a man is always
- 5:01:05Speaker 1: in bad company, which has no idea of nuances. Woe
- 5:01:10Speaker 1: to me, I am a nuance and which has not
- 5:01:14Speaker 1: a spree in its feet, and cannot even walk withal.
- 5:01:19Speaker 1: In short, the Germans have no feed at all. They
- 5:01:23Speaker 1: simply have legs. The Germans have not the faintest idea
- 5:01:29Speaker 1: of how vulgar they are, But this in itself is
- 5:01:33Speaker 1: the acme of vulgarity. They are not even ashamed of
- 5:01:37Speaker 1: being merely Germans. They will have their say in everything.
- 5:01:43Speaker 1: They regard themselves as fit to decide all questions. I
- 5:01:47Speaker 1: even fear that they have decided about me. My whole
- 5:01:52Speaker 1: life is essentially a proof of this remark. In vain
- 5:01:57Speaker 1: have I sought among them for a sign of tact
- 5:02:01Speaker 1: and delicacy towards myself? Among Jews, I did indeed find it,
- 5:02:06Speaker 1: but not among Germans. I am so constituted as to
- 5:02:11Speaker 1: be gentle and kindly to everyone. I have the right
- 5:02:15Speaker 1: not to draw distinctions, but this does not prevent my
- 5:02:20Speaker 1: eyes from being open. I accept no one, and least
- 5:02:24Speaker 1: of all my friends. I only trust that this has
- 5:02:29Speaker 1: not prejudiced my reputation for humanity.
- 5:02:32Speaker 2: Among them.
- 5:02:36Speaker 1: There are five or six things which I have always
- 5:02:39Speaker 1: made points of honor. Albeit the truth remains that for
- 5:02:44Speaker 1: many years I have considered almost every letter that has
- 5:02:48Speaker 1: reached me as a piece of cynicism. There is more
- 5:02:52Speaker 1: cynicism in an attitude of good will towards me than
- 5:02:57Speaker 1: any sort of hatred. I tell every friend to his
- 5:03:01Speaker 1: face that he has never thought it worth his while
- 5:03:05Speaker 1: to study any one of my writings. From the slightest hints,
- 5:03:10Speaker 1: I gather that they do not even know what lies
- 5:03:14Speaker 1: hidden in my books. And with regard even to my Zarathustra,
- 5:03:19Speaker 1: which of my friends would have seen more in it
- 5:03:23Speaker 1: than a piece of unwarrantable, though fortunately harmless arrogance. Ten
- 5:03:31Speaker 1: years have elapsed, and no one has yet felt it
- 5:03:34Speaker 1: a duty to his conscience to defend my name against
- 5:03:38Speaker 1: the absurd silence beneath which it has been entombed. It
- 5:03:44Speaker 1: was a foreigner, a Dane, who first showed sufficient keenness
- 5:03:48Speaker 1: of instinct and courage to do this, and who protested
- 5:03:53Speaker 1: indignantly against my so called friends. At what German university
- 5:03:59Speaker 1: todd day would such lectures on my philosophy be possible,
- 5:04:04Speaker 1: as those wish doctor Brandes delivered last spring in Copenhagen,
- 5:04:09Speaker 1: thus proving once more his right to the title psychologist.
- 5:04:15Speaker 1: For my part, these things have never caused me any
- 5:04:19Speaker 1: pain that which is necessary does not offend me. Our
- 5:04:24Speaker 1: moor fatty is the core of my nature. This, however,
- 5:04:29Speaker 1: does not alter the fact that I love irony, an
- 5:04:32Speaker 1: even world historic irony. And thus, about two years before
- 5:04:38Speaker 1: hurling the destructive thunderbolt of the transvaluation, which will send
- 5:04:43Speaker 1: the whole of civilization into convulsions, I sent my case
- 5:04:47Speaker 1: of Wagner out into the world. The Germans were given
- 5:04:52Speaker 1: the chance of blundering and immortalizing their stupidity once more
- 5:04:57Speaker 1: on my account. And they still I have just enough
- 5:05:00Speaker 1: time to do it in and have they fallen in
- 5:05:04Speaker 1: with my plans admirably, My dear Germans, allow me to
- 5:05:08Speaker 1: congratulate you. End of Why I write such excellent books?
- 5:05:16Speaker 1: Part three, Why I am a fatality? I know my destiny.
- 5:05:27Speaker 1: There will come a day when my name will recall
- 5:05:29Speaker 1: the memory of something formidable, a crisis the like of
- 5:05:34Speaker 1: which has never been known on earth, the memory of
- 5:05:38Speaker 1: the most profound clash of consciences, and the passing of
- 5:05:43Speaker 1: a sentence upon all that which theretofore had been believed
- 5:05:49Speaker 1: exacted and hallowed. I am not a man, I am dynamite,
- 5:05:58Speaker 1: And with it all there is naught of the founder
- 5:06:01Speaker 1: of a religion. In me, religions are matters for the mob.
- 5:06:07Speaker 1: After coming in contact with a religious man, I always
- 5:06:11Speaker 1: feel that I must wash my hands. I require no believers.
- 5:06:18Speaker 1: It is my opinion that I am too full of
- 5:06:21Speaker 1: malice to believe even in myself. I never address myself
- 5:06:26Speaker 1: to masses. I am horribly frightened that one day I
- 5:06:30Speaker 1: shall be pronounced wholly. You will understand why I publish
- 5:06:36Speaker 1: this book beforehand. It is to prevent people from wronging me.
- 5:06:41Speaker 1: I refuse to be a saint. I would rather be
- 5:06:44Speaker 1: a clown. Maybe I am a clown, and I am notwithstanding,
- 5:06:51Speaker 1: or rather not notwithstanding, the mouthpiece of truth. For nothing
- 5:06:59Speaker 1: more blown out with falsehood has ever existed than a saint.
- 5:07:04Speaker 1: But my truth is terrible, for hitherto lies have been
- 5:07:12Speaker 1: called truth. The transvaluation of all values. This is my
- 5:07:20Speaker 1: formula for mankind's greatest step towards coming to its senses,
- 5:07:26Speaker 1: a step which in me became flesh and genius. My
- 5:07:34Speaker 1: destiny ordained that I should be the first decent human being,
- 5:07:39Speaker 1: and that I should feel myself opposed to the falsehood
- 5:07:42Speaker 1: of millenniums. I was the first to discover truth, and
- 5:07:47Speaker 1: for the simple reason that I was the first who
- 5:07:51Speaker 1: became conscious of falsehood as falsehood, that is to say,
- 5:07:58Speaker 1: I smelt it as so much my genius resides in
- 5:08:02Speaker 1: my nostrils. I contradict as no one has contradicted hitherto,
- 5:08:09Speaker 1: and am nevertheless the reverse of a negative spirit. I
- 5:08:14Speaker 1: am the harbringer of joy, the like of which has
- 5:08:18Speaker 1: never existed before. I have discovered tasks of such lofty
- 5:08:23Speaker 1: greatness that until my time no one had any idea
- 5:08:29Speaker 1: of such things. Mankind can begin to have fresh hopes
- 5:08:34Speaker 1: only now that I have lived. Thus, I am necessarily
- 5:08:40Speaker 1: a man of fate. For when truth enters the lists
- 5:08:46Speaker 1: against the falsehood of ages, shocks are bound to ensue,
- 5:08:51Speaker 1: and a spell of earthquakes followed by the transposition of
- 5:08:57Speaker 1: hills and valleys, such as the world has never yet imagined,
- 5:09:02Speaker 1: even in its dreams. The concept politics then becomes elevated
- 5:09:09Speaker 1: entirely to the sphere of spiritual warfare. All the mighty
- 5:09:15Speaker 1: realms of the ancient order of society are blown into space,
- 5:09:21Speaker 1: for they are all based on falsehood. There will be
- 5:09:25Speaker 1: wars the like of which have never been seen on
- 5:09:28Speaker 1: earth before. Only from my time and after me will
- 5:09:34Speaker 1: politics on a large scale exist on Earth.
- 5:09:42Speaker 2: Two.
- 5:09:44Speaker 1: If you should require a formula for a destiny of
- 5:09:47Speaker 1: this kind that has taken human form, you will find
- 5:09:51Speaker 1: it in my Zarathustra. And he who would be a
- 5:09:55Speaker 1: creator in good and evil. Verily, he must to be
- 5:10:00Speaker 1: a destroyer and break values into pieces. Thus the greatest
- 5:10:06Speaker 1: evil belongeth unto the greatest good. But this is the
- 5:10:12Speaker 1: creative good. I am by far the most terrible man
- 5:10:17Speaker 1: that has ever existed. But this does not alter the
- 5:10:21Speaker 1: fact that I shall become the most beneficent. I know
- 5:10:26Speaker 1: the joy of annihilation to a degree which is commensurate
- 5:10:31Speaker 1: with my power to annihilate. In both cases I obey
- 5:10:36Speaker 1: my deunesia nature, which knows not how to separate the
- 5:10:40Speaker 1: negative deed from the saying of yeay, I am the
- 5:10:44Speaker 1: first immoralist, and in this sense I am essentially the annihilator.
- 5:10:53Speaker 1: Three people never asked me, as they should have done,
- 5:10:58Speaker 1: what the name of zarathi Ustra precisely meant in my mouth,
- 5:11:03Speaker 1: in the mouth of the first immoralist. For that which
- 5:11:07Speaker 1: distinguishes this Persian from all others in the past is
- 5:11:11Speaker 1: the very fact that he was the exact reverse of
- 5:11:15Speaker 1: an immoralist. Zarathustra was the first to see in the
- 5:11:20Speaker 1: struggle between good and evil the essential weal in the
- 5:11:24Speaker 1: working of things. The translation of morality into the realm
- 5:11:29Speaker 1: of metaphysics as force, cause, and in it self is
- 5:11:34Speaker 1: his work. But the very question suggests its own answer.
- 5:11:40Speaker 1: Zarathustra created this most pretentious of all error's morality. Therefore
- 5:11:47Speaker 1: he must be the first to expose it. Not only
- 5:11:51Speaker 1: because he has had longer and greater experience of the
- 5:11:55Speaker 1: subject than any other thinker. All history is indeed the
- 5:12:00Speaker 1: experimental refutation of the theory of the so called moral
- 5:12:06Speaker 1: order of things, but because of the most important fact
- 5:12:11Speaker 1: that Zarathustra was the most truthful of thinkers. In his
- 5:12:16Speaker 1: teaching alone, is truthfulness upheld as the highest virtue, that
- 5:12:23Speaker 1: is to say, as the reverse of the cowardice of
- 5:12:27Speaker 1: the idealist who takes to his heels at the sight
- 5:12:31Speaker 1: of reality. Zarathustra has more pluck in his body than
- 5:12:38Speaker 1: all other thinkers put together to tell the truth and
- 5:12:42Speaker 1: to aim straight. That is the first Persian virtue. Have
- 5:12:49Speaker 1: I made myself clear the overcoming of morality by itself
- 5:12:56Speaker 1: through truthfulness? The moralist's overcoming himself in his opposite in me.
- 5:13:05Speaker 1: That is what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth.
- 5:13:12Speaker 2: Four.
- 5:13:14Speaker 1: In reality, two negations are involved in my title immoralist.
- 5:13:21Speaker 1: I first of all deny the type of man that
- 5:13:23Speaker 1: has hitherto been regarded as the highest, the good, the kind,
- 5:13:29Speaker 1: and the charitable. And I also deny that kind of
- 5:13:33Speaker 1: morality which has become recognized and paramount as morality in itself.
- 5:13:41Speaker 1: I speak of the morality of decadence, or, to use
- 5:13:46Speaker 1: a still cruder term, Christian morality. I would agree to
- 5:13:52Speaker 1: the second of the two negations being regarded as the
- 5:13:55Speaker 1: more decisive four reckoned as a whole, the overestimation of
- 5:14:01Speaker 1: goodness and kindness seems to me already a consequence of decadence,
- 5:14:07Speaker 1: a symptom of weakness, and incompatible with any ascending and
- 5:14:13Speaker 1: yay saying life. Negation and annihilation are inseparable from a
- 5:14:20Speaker 1: yea saying attitude towards life. Let me halt for a
- 5:14:26Speaker 1: moment at the question of the psychology of the good man.
- 5:14:32Speaker 1: In order to appraise the value of a certain type
- 5:14:35Speaker 1: of man, the cost of his maintenance must be calculated,
- 5:14:39Speaker 1: and the condition of his existence must be known. The
- 5:14:44Speaker 1: condition of the existence of the good is falsehood, or
- 5:14:49Speaker 1: otherwise expressed the refusal at any price to see how
- 5:14:54Speaker 1: reality is actually constituted, to see that this reality is
- 5:15:03Speaker 1: not so constituted as always to be stimulating beneficent instincts,
- 5:15:09Speaker 1: and still less so as to suffer at all moments.
- 5:15:13Speaker 1: The intrusion of ignorant and good natured hands to consider
- 5:15:18Speaker 1: distress of all kinds as an objection, as something which
- 5:15:22Speaker 1: must be done away with, is the greatest nonsense on earth.
- 5:15:28Speaker 1: Generally speaking, it is nonsense of the most disastrous sort,
- 5:15:34Speaker 1: fatal in its stupidity, almost as mad as the will
- 5:15:40Speaker 1: to abolish bad weather out of pity for the poor,
- 5:15:45Speaker 1: so to speak, in the great economy of the whole universe,
- 5:15:52Speaker 1: the terrors of reality, in the passions, in the desires,
- 5:15:57Speaker 1: in the will to power, are incalculably more necessary than
- 5:16:03Speaker 1: that form of petty happiness which is called goodness. It
- 5:16:09Speaker 1: is even needful to practice leniency in order so much
- 5:16:14Speaker 1: as to allow the latter a place at all, Seeing
- 5:16:19Speaker 1: that it is based upon a falsification of the instincts,
- 5:16:25Speaker 1: I shall have an excellent opportunity of showing the incalculable
- 5:16:30Speaker 1: calamitous consequences to the whole of history of the creedo
- 5:16:36Speaker 1: of optimism, this monstrous offspring of the hominis optomy. Zarathustra,
- 5:16:46Speaker 1: the first you recognized that the optimist is just as
- 5:16:51Speaker 1: degenerate as the pessimists, though perhaps more detrimental, says, good
- 5:16:59Speaker 1: men never speak the truth, false shores and false harbors.
- 5:17:06Speaker 1: Were ye taught by the good in the lies of
- 5:17:10Speaker 1: the good, were ye born and bred.
- 5:17:14Speaker 2: Through the good?
- 5:17:15Speaker 1: Everything hath become false and crooked from the roots. Translator's note,
- 5:17:22Speaker 1: needless to say, this is Nietzsche and no longer the
- 5:17:25Speaker 1: Persian and translator's note. Fortunately, the world is not built
- 5:17:32Speaker 1: merely upon those instincts which would secure to the good natured,
- 5:17:37Speaker 1: herd animal his paltry happiness. To desire everybody to become
- 5:17:43Speaker 1: a good man, a gregarious animal, a blue eyed, benevolent,
- 5:17:49Speaker 1: beautiful soul, or, as Herbert Spenser wished, a creature of
- 5:17:54Speaker 1: altruism would mean robbing existence of its greatest character, castrating man,
- 5:18:03Speaker 1: and reducing humanity to a sort of wretched chinadom. And
- 5:18:09Speaker 1: this some have tried to do. It is precisely this
- 5:18:15Speaker 1: than men called morality. In this sense, Zarathustra calls the
- 5:18:23Speaker 1: good now the last man, and Anon the beginning of
- 5:18:29Speaker 1: the end. And above all, he considers them as the
- 5:18:34Speaker 1: most detrimental kind of men, because they secure their existence
- 5:18:39Speaker 1: at the cost of truth and at the cost.
- 5:18:42Speaker 2: Of the future.
- 5:18:45Speaker 1: The good they cannot create. They are ever the beginning
- 5:18:50Speaker 1: of the end. They crucify him who writeth new values
- 5:18:55Speaker 1: on new tables. They sacrifice, unto their themselves, the future.
- 5:19:03Speaker 1: They crucify the whole future of humanity. The good they
- 5:19:10Speaker 1: are ever the beginning of the end. And whatever harm
- 5:19:15Speaker 1: the slanderers of the world may do, the harm of
- 5:19:19Speaker 1: the good is the most calamitous of all harm.
- 5:19:26Speaker 2: Five.
- 5:19:29Speaker 1: Zarathustra, as the first psychologist of the good man, is
- 5:19:34Speaker 1: perforce the friend of the evil man. When a degenerate
- 5:19:40Speaker 1: kind of man has succeeded to the highest rank among
- 5:19:44Speaker 1: the human species, his position must have been gained at
- 5:19:49Speaker 1: the cost of the reverse type, at the cost of
- 5:19:52Speaker 1: the strong man, who is certain of life. When the
- 5:19:57Speaker 1: gregarious animal stands in the glory rays of the purest virtue,
- 5:20:03Speaker 1: the exceptional man must be degraded to the rank of evil.
- 5:20:08Speaker 1: If falsehood insists at all costs on claiming the word
- 5:20:14Speaker 1: truth for its own particular standpoint, the really truthful man
- 5:20:21Speaker 1: must be sought out among the despised. Zarathustra allows no
- 5:20:27Speaker 1: doubt here. He says, it was precisely the knowledge of
- 5:20:31Speaker 1: the good and of the best which inspired his absolute
- 5:20:36Speaker 1: horror of men, and it was out of this feeling
- 5:20:41Speaker 1: of repulsion that he grew the wings which allowed him
- 5:20:46Speaker 1: to soar into remote futures. He does not conceal a
- 5:20:51Speaker 1: fact that his type of man is one which is
- 5:20:55Speaker 1: relatively superhuman, especially as opposed to the good man, and
- 5:21:02Speaker 1: that the good and the just would regard his superman
- 5:21:07Speaker 1: as the devil. Ye hire men on whom my gaze
- 5:21:15Speaker 1: now falls. This is the doubt that ye waken my breast,
- 5:21:22Speaker 1: and this is my secret laughter. Methinks you would call
- 5:21:26Speaker 1: my superman the devil. So strange are ye in your
- 5:21:33Speaker 1: souls to all that is great, that the superman would
- 5:21:37Speaker 1: be terrible in your eyes for his goodness. It is
- 5:21:44Speaker 1: from this passage, and from no other, that you must
- 5:21:47Speaker 1: set out to understand the goal to which Zarathustra aspires.
- 5:21:54Speaker 1: The kind of man that he conceives sees reality as
- 5:21:59Speaker 1: it is. He is strong enough for this. He is
- 5:22:06Speaker 1: not estranged or far removed from it. He is that
- 5:22:11Speaker 1: reality himself, in his own nature, can be found all
- 5:22:16Speaker 1: the terrible and questionable character of reality. Only thus can
- 5:22:23Speaker 1: man have greatness.
- 5:22:30Speaker 2: Six.
- 5:22:32Speaker 1: But I have chosen the title of immoralist as a surname,
- 5:22:37Speaker 1: and as a badge of honor, and yet another sense.
- 5:22:41Speaker 1: I am very proud to possess this name, which distinguishes
- 5:22:45Speaker 1: me from all the rest of mankind. No one hitherto
- 5:22:50Speaker 1: has felt Christian morality beneath him. To that end, there
- 5:22:55Speaker 1: were needed height, a remoteness of vision, and an abysmal
- 5:23:01Speaker 1: psychological depth not believed to be possible hitherto. Up to
- 5:23:08Speaker 1: the present, Christian morality has burnt the cursay of all thinkers.
- 5:23:15Speaker 1: They stood at her service. What man before my time
- 5:23:20Speaker 1: has descended into the underground caverns, from out of which
- 5:23:25Speaker 1: the poisonous fumes of this ideal, of the slandering of
- 5:23:30Speaker 1: the world burst forth. What man had even dared to
- 5:23:36Speaker 1: suppose that they were underground caverns was a single one
- 5:23:43Speaker 1: of all the philosophers who preceded me, a psychologist at all,
- 5:23:48Speaker 1: and not the very reverse of a psychologist, that is
- 5:23:52Speaker 1: to say, a superior swindler, an idealist, before my time,
- 5:23:59Speaker 1: there was no psychology. To be the first in this
- 5:24:03Speaker 1: new realm may amount to a curse. At all events,
- 5:24:07Speaker 1: it is a fatality, for one is also the first
- 5:24:13Speaker 1: to despise. My danger is the loathing of mankind. Seven
- 5:24:26Speaker 1: Have you understood me? That which defines me, that which
- 5:24:31Speaker 1: makes me stand apart from the whole of the rest
- 5:24:34Speaker 1: of humanity, is the fact that I unmasked Christian morality.
- 5:24:42Speaker 1: For this reason, I was in need of a word
- 5:24:45Speaker 1: which conveyed the idea of a challenge to everybody not
- 5:24:51Speaker 1: to have awakened to these discoveries before struck me as
- 5:24:55Speaker 1: being the sign of the greatest uncleanliness that mankind has
- 5:25:01Speaker 1: on his conscience. As self deception become instinctive, as the
- 5:25:07Speaker 1: fundamental will to be blind to every phenomenon, all course, history,
- 5:25:13Speaker 1: and all reality. In fact, as an almost criminal fraud.
- 5:25:20Speaker 1: In sukilokikis blindness in regard to Christianity is the essence
- 5:25:27Speaker 1: of criminality, for it is the crime against life, ages,
- 5:25:35Speaker 1: and peoples. The first as well as the last, philosophers
- 5:25:40Speaker 1: and old women, with the exception of five or six
- 5:25:43Speaker 1: moments in history, and of myself a seventh, are all
- 5:25:50Speaker 1: alike in this hitherto, the Christian has been the moral being,
- 5:25:57Speaker 1: a peerless oddity, and as a moral being he was
- 5:26:03Speaker 1: more absurd, more vain, more thoughtless, and a greater disadvantage
- 5:26:09Speaker 1: to himself than the greatest despiser of humanity could have
- 5:26:15Speaker 1: deemed possible. Christian morality is the most malignant form of
- 5:26:23Speaker 1: all falsehood, the actual cursay of humanity, that which has
- 5:26:30Speaker 1: corrupted mankind. It is not error, as error which infuriates
- 5:26:36Speaker 1: me at the sight of this spectacle. It is not
- 5:26:40Speaker 1: the millenniums of absence of good will, of discipline, of decency,
- 5:26:47Speaker 1: and of bravery in spiritual things, which betrays itself in
- 5:26:52Speaker 1: the triumph of Christianity. It is rather the absence of nature.
- 5:27:00Speaker 1: It is the perfectly ghastly fact that anti nature itself
- 5:27:05Speaker 1: received the highest honors as morality and as law, and
- 5:27:12Speaker 1: remain suspended over man as the categorical imperative. Fancy blundering
- 5:27:19Speaker 1: in this way not as an individual, not as a people,
- 5:27:26Speaker 1: but as a whole species, as humanity, to teach the
- 5:27:32Speaker 1: contempt of all the principal instincts of life, to posit
- 5:27:37Speaker 1: falsely the existence of a soul of a spirit in
- 5:27:43Speaker 1: order to be able to defy the body, to spread
- 5:27:47Speaker 1: the feeling that there was something impure in the very
- 5:27:51Speaker 1: first prequisite of life, in sex, to seek the principle
- 5:27:56Speaker 1: of evil, in the profound need of growth and expansion,
- 5:28:01Speaker 1: that is to say, in severe self love, the term
- 5:28:06Speaker 1: itself is slanderous. And conversely, to see a higher moral value.
- 5:28:13Speaker 1: But what am I talking about? I mean the moral
- 5:28:17Speaker 1: value per se in the typical signs of decline, in
- 5:28:22Speaker 1: the antagonism of the instincts, in selflessness, in a loss
- 5:28:28Speaker 1: of ballast, in the suppression of the personal element, and
- 5:28:33Speaker 1: in love of one's neighbor neighbor itis. What is humanity
- 5:28:42Speaker 1: itself in a state of degeneration? Has it always been
- 5:28:47Speaker 1: in a state? One thing is certain that ye are
- 5:28:52Speaker 1: taught only the values of decadence as the highest values.
- 5:28:57Speaker 1: The morality of self renunciation is essentially the morality of degeneration.
- 5:29:05Speaker 1: The fact I am going to the dogs is translated
- 5:29:10Speaker 1: into the imperative Ye shall all go to the dogs,
- 5:29:15Speaker 1: and not only into the imperative. This morality of self renunciation,
- 5:29:21Speaker 1: which is the only kind of morality that has been
- 5:29:24Speaker 1: taught hitherto, betrays the will to nonentity it denies life
- 5:29:30Speaker 1: to the very roots. This still remains the possibility that
- 5:29:35Speaker 1: it is not mankind that is in a state of degeneration,
- 5:29:39Speaker 1: but only that parasitical kind of man, the priest, who,
- 5:29:44Speaker 1: by means of morality and lies, has climbed up to
- 5:29:47Speaker 1: his position of determinator of values, who divined in Christian morality,
- 5:29:53Speaker 1: his road to power and to tell the truth. This
- 5:29:58Speaker 1: is my opinion. The teachers and the leaders of mankind,
- 5:30:03Speaker 1: including the theologians, have been every one of them decadence,
- 5:30:09Speaker 1: hence the transvaluation of all values into a hostility towards life,
- 5:30:15Speaker 1: hence morality. The definition of morality. Morality is the idiosyncrasy
- 5:30:22Speaker 1: of decadence, actuated by a desire to avenge themselves with
- 5:30:28Speaker 1: success upon life. I attach great value to this definition.
- 5:30:36Speaker 1: Eight have you understood me? I have not uttered a
- 5:30:42Speaker 1: single word which I have not already said five years
- 5:30:45Speaker 1: ago through my mouthpiece Zarathustra. The unmasking of Christian morality
- 5:30:52Speaker 1: is an event which is unequaled in history. It is
- 5:30:56Speaker 1: a real catastrophe. The man who throws light upon it
- 5:31:02Speaker 1: is a for Saint Mageur, a fatality. He breaks the
- 5:31:06Speaker 1: history of man into two time is wreckoned up before
- 5:31:11Speaker 1: him and after him. The lightning flash of truth struck
- 5:31:16Speaker 1: precisely that which theretofore had stood highest. He who understands
- 5:31:23Speaker 1: what was destroyed by that flash should look to see
- 5:31:27Speaker 1: whether he still holds anything in his hands. Everything which
- 5:31:32Speaker 1: until then was called truth has been revealed as the
- 5:31:36Speaker 1: most detrimental, most spiteful, and most.
- 5:31:40Speaker 2: Subterranean form of life.
- 5:31:43Speaker 1: The Holy pretext, which was the improvement of man, has
- 5:31:49Speaker 1: been recognized as a ruse for draining life of its
- 5:31:53Speaker 1: energy and of its blood. Morality conceived as vampirism. The
- 5:32:00Speaker 1: man who unmasks morality has also unmasked the worthlessness of
- 5:32:05Speaker 1: the values in which men either believe or have believed.
- 5:32:11Speaker 1: He no longer sees anything to be revered in the
- 5:32:14Speaker 1: most venerable men, even in the types of men that
- 5:32:19Speaker 1: have been pronounced wholly. All he can see in them
- 5:32:23Speaker 1: is the most fatal kind of abortions, fatal because they fascinate.
- 5:32:31Speaker 1: The concept God was invented as the opposite of the
- 5:32:35Speaker 1: concept life. Everything detrimental, poisonous and slanderous, and all deadly
- 5:32:43Speaker 1: hostility to life was bound together in one horrible unit
- 5:32:49Speaker 1: in him. The concepts beyond and true world were invented
- 5:32:58Speaker 1: in order to depreciate the only world that exists, in
- 5:33:04Speaker 1: order that no goal or aim, no sense or task
- 5:33:09Speaker 1: might be left to earthly reality. The concepts soul, spirit,
- 5:33:17Speaker 1: and last of all, the concept immortal soul, were invented
- 5:33:22Speaker 1: in order to throw contempt on the body, in order
- 5:33:26Speaker 1: to make it sick and holly, in order to cultivate
- 5:33:31Speaker 1: an attitude of appalling levity towards all things in life
- 5:33:36Speaker 1: which deserve to be treated seriously, i e. The questions
- 5:33:42Speaker 1: of nutrition and habitation, of intellectual diet, the treatment of
- 5:33:48Speaker 1: the sick, cleanliness and weather. Instead of health, we find
- 5:33:55Speaker 1: the salvation of the soul, that is to say, a
- 5:33:59Speaker 1: fully seculaire fluctuating between convulsions and penitence, and the hysteria
- 5:34:07Speaker 1: of redemption. The concept sin, together with the torture instrument
- 5:34:14Speaker 1: appertaining to it, which is the concept of free will,
- 5:34:19Speaker 1: was invented in order to confuse and muddle our instincts
- 5:34:25Speaker 1: and to render the mistrust of them man's second nature.
- 5:34:30Speaker 1: In the concept's disinterestedness and self denial, the actual signs
- 5:34:38Speaker 1: of decadence are to be found the allurement of that
- 5:34:43Speaker 1: which is detrimental, the inability to discover one's own advantage,
- 5:34:50Speaker 1: and self destruction are made into absolute qualities, into the duty,
- 5:34:57Speaker 1: the holiness, and the de divinity of man. Finally, to
- 5:35:06Speaker 1: keep the worst to the last. By the notion of
- 5:35:10Speaker 1: the good man. All that is favored, which is weak,
- 5:35:15Speaker 1: ill botched, and sick in itself, which ought to be
- 5:35:21Speaker 1: wiped out, the law of selection is thwarted. An ideal
- 5:35:27Speaker 1: is made out of opposition to the proud, well constituted man,
- 5:35:33Speaker 1: to him who says yea to life, to him who
- 5:35:37Speaker 1: is certain of the future, and who guarantees the future.
- 5:35:42Speaker 1: This man is henceforth called the evil one. And all
- 5:35:47Speaker 1: this was believed in as morality. Ecraseelan fam nine.
- 5:36:04Speaker 3: Have you understood me? Dionysus verses Christ.
- 5:36:18Speaker 1: End of Why I Am A Fatality? Recording by Tim
- 5:36:25Speaker 1: Sherman Chase w W W dot S H E E
- 5:36:32Speaker 1: R M A. N hyphen Chase dot org dot UK.
- 5:36:46Speaker 1: End of Ake Homer by Furishnietzsche